| 266II. From the Contents of Esoteric Classes II: 1910–1912: Esoteric Lesson
24 Aug 1910, Munich Translator Unknown |
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| 266II. From the Contents of Esoteric Classes II: 1910–1912: Esoteric Lesson
24 Aug 1910, Munich Translator Unknown |
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Anyone who undertakes an esoteric training must be clear about what he is doing thereby. We're karmically connected with what we are and do; we're placed into the whole of earth existence by leading divine beings. Everything that we think, feel and will in the way of the most sublime beauty and the highest morality is always still connected with general evolution. But by deciding to begin an esoteric training we step out of this general development that's guided by higher beings. Thereby we begin something absolutely new. In an esoteric training we stop being led by spiritual, divine beings and we become independent companions of these creator spirits. Man on earth consists of the tetralogy: physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego, which are kept in harmony by higher beings. If we carry out the resolve to begin an esoteric training we then begin to work independently at the transformation of these individual bodies. This takes place through the exercises that are given to us. They gradually work on our etheric body in such a way that it becomes loosened from the firm structure of the physical body. This influence is not directly on the etheric body but on the astral body or soul which we work on through the regular daily or weekly repetition of exercises and pictures. Every sound, word and sequence of sounds and concepts in the meditation verses is of some significance; they have an effect through the regular repetition while one completely forgets oneself. When we wake up in the morning we sometimes have a dim memory of the spiritual world, of the world from which strength flows to us through our exercises, and some of an esoteric student's nicest experiences are these faint memories of the world where we were at the sources of strength. If someone had to leave a friend who was dear to him, it could be that something about this person will flow into the esoteric pupil together with his memory of the spiritual world. Someone who's given something like this should look upon it as grace. After meditating for some times we notice that we've changed; we no longer say some of the unkind things that we used to and we acquire a much finer logic. We feel that we've improved. We get better. But because we place ourselves outside of the customary framework we lose the support that's given by convention. We become inwardly freer but thereby your bad sides come out more; then we notice how bad we are. We're really a lot worse than we usually think. Difficult, unpleasant hours come to every esoteric striver, and then it's good to have some support. We find this support in the New Testament; we find advice and support for every case and situation and in every weakness; we only have to look for it. And if we don't find it, we can comfort ourselves with the conviction that it's our own weakness that keeps us from finding the right thing but that it's nevertheless in the Bible. Deceptions in clairvoyance can easily occur at first. One thinks that one is seeing something outside, and it's one's own interior that's reflected there. It's even worse with sounds that one thinks one hears; beings who want to pull a meditator down deceive him thereby. An esoteric striver not only has to do his meditations, to pray in the best sense of the word, but also to watch, to be on the lookout for bad influences that want to interfere when an independent transformation of bodies is undertaken. An occult sentence against all deception is: Every path into the spiritual world goes through the heart. During the meditation one can feel that lines go from every point of the outer physical body towards a center, which is the heart. These lines then go on in the opposite direction and into the spiritual world. This is like a feeling that Christ is in one, and it's a sign that there's no deception. Each of our members is connected with one sign of the Zodiac; forces from Leo flow down into our heart. Forces from the sun also stream into our heart. Likewise, fire spirits work on our heart. Leo, sun, and flame are often used as symbols for the heart. Like the heart every part of us is related to outside forces; we've grown out of the whole world and are imbedded in it. If we really let this fact live in our soul we then rightly understand the verse: In the spirit lay the germ of my body. |
| 266II. From the Contents of Esoteric Classes II: 1910–1912: Esoteric Lesson
26 Aug 1910, Munich Translator Unknown |
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| 266II. From the Contents of Esoteric Classes II: 1910–1912: Esoteric Lesson
26 Aug 1910, Munich Translator Unknown |
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We'll first address the Spirit of the Day. One can look upon it as especially good fortune if an esoteric class can be held on a Friday. Great embracing Spirit, in your life I live with the earth's life. Great embracing Spirit We're in divine, etheric spheres at night with our astral body and ego, from which we bring down strength for our physical life. We are connected with divine, spiritual beings there That's why when we wake up in the morning we should never have banal, everyday, egotistical thoughts right away For if we do, we cut ourselves off from spiritual beings and forces in which we were immersed during sleep. Before we go back to any action in daily life, to any thought about physical existence, we should devote ourselves to our meditation as we forget ourselves and become immersed in those regions. Every meditator should make it his sacred duty to do his meditation right after awakening, or at least his first thought should be to think thankfully about sublime beings. An even holier duty, if there can be such for every esoteric pupil, is to make it clear to himself that he is doing a great injustice to all men and to higher spiritual beings if he approaches meditation with impure thoughts and feelings. For this pollutes spiritual spheres. The forces that must be used to eliminate this pollution again are withdrawn from mankind's progress. One can do one's exercises with considerable concentration and yet be unholy within oneself. Doing a meditation like this is merely a matter of will. Of course, the latter should be consolidated and developed. But the whole inner life must be consecrated, so that only sacred, sublime things live in our soul. Just as one shouldn't go into meditation with impure thoughts and feelings, so one shouldn't go to sleep in the evening with such things. We're polluting divine worlds if we take thoughts of pride, vanity and arrogance with us. We should go to sleep with thoughts of reverence and thanks towards divine beings because we couldn't live for a minute while our ego and astral body are outside if such beings did not maintain our physical and etheric bodies in the meantime. We should go to sleep with reverence towards great divine beings. An esoteric differs from an exoteric in that God lives in him consciously, in that he really lets God's force become active in him. This doesn't happen through the ideas he makes of God. Such ideas can harm a man when he later goes into higher worlds. For instance, he wants to find the Christ there in accordance with the ideas that he's made of him, and thereby doesn't recognize the real Christ, for he's different from the ever so high ideas that one can make of him. Arrogance, pride and vanity in particular are qualities that an esoteric should get rid of. An esoteric pupil who thinks that he's already gotten rid of arrogance, pride, etc., must know that these qualities are still present in a subtle way. There is a certain vanity in the thought that one has laid these qualities aside and has advanced a great deal in one's development which is much worse than vanity in outer life, for it's intensified and applied to higher spiritual things. We can, however, be proud of a clear, logical and correct thinking—if it's unsubjective. We're living in a very special, important time. It's a time of preparation for the Christ who will become perceptible in the etheric. We must prepare ourselves so that we can see him there. Men who don't have the good fortune to come to theosophy now won't be able to experience this event. As we've been hearing for the last few days, we arose from higher spiritual forces. We descended from the laps of the Gods. Knowing this, we can place the Rosicrucian verse before our souls: Ex Deo nascimur—we're born from God. A sentence should stand right next to it that makes us feel very small; we should give ourselves up and lose ourselves entirely and devote ourselves to Christ. And if this mood lives in our soul rightly, we can have Ex Deo nascimur and next to it: In Christo morimur—in Christ we die. And the third sentence of this Rosicrucian saying gives us a wide view of how we can consciously develop the spirit—the Holy Spirit—in us: Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus—we'll live again and again in the Holy Spirit. And if we make this Rosicrucian verse the basic mood of our meditation we'll then take in the following verse with full understanding and with holy feelings: In the spirit lay the germ of my body … |
| 266II. From the Contents of Esoteric Classes II: 1910–1912: Esoteric Lesson
11 Dec 1910, Munich Translator Unknown |
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| 266II. From the Contents of Esoteric Classes II: 1910–1912: Esoteric Lesson
11 Dec 1910, Munich Translator Unknown |
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In our esoteric classes we've often spoken of the paths that an esoteric in the old mystery schools had to tread. At that time a man, as it were, inverted his soul and spiritual qualities more rapidly through certain methods, for he was physically and psychically more robust then. He had a stronger soul, and since this is the architect of the physical body, the latter was also stronger. These were pre-historical times. Men were less complicated and more uniform at that time. Humanity sprang out of the lap of the Gods, and after they had gradually lost their old clairvoyance on their path through matter it's a man's task to raise himself to spirituality again by taking in the Christ impulse, and filled by this, to unite himself with the Godhead. Men have become ever weaker in body, soul and spirit through increasing materialism, and one can no longer subject the present more delicate constitutions to the trials that pupils in the ancient mysteries underwent. Back then, a candidate for initiation mainly worked at quickly getting to know how untenable egoism and fear are and at putting them aside. One can't judge what egoism really is without ordinary concepts connected with the physical plane. The candidate for initiation was put into a sleep and his soul was then shown what it had elaborated in the spiritual world until then. His ego was then as it were, sucked up by the macrocosm, and it saw that it was a nothing. Of course this standing before nothingness as before a dark abyss aroused feelings of fear, and he had to get over this. After going through these trials he was either unfit for outer life since he realized that all perishable things were nothing, or he remained strong and decided to use this incarnation to develop as much as possible so that he could some day get to know higher worlds. A modern shouldn't be grabbed so robustly. If an ordinary modern says that the ground is shaking under his feet, he's already saying a lot. He will always try to stand fast. He doesn't want to jump over the abyss. He must let the ground slip out from under him. For if he wants to press into spiritual worlds the concepts he formed here on the physical plane don't help him at all. He's not allowed to take any of them with him. The only things he may keep are the capacity to make concepts, a sense for truth, and logic. The capacity to form new concepts and a sense for the new truths that he'll get to know. The masters of wisdom and of the harmony of feelings send us an analogy to elucidate this matter. It's as if we saw all the objects in our room in a mirror and we would then go behind the mirror to find their reality there. We would see that there's nothing behind it. Here we must let concepts about higher worlds flow into us from higher beings and we must work at ourselves so that we form such concepts. But after we've acquired some through serious and honest work, we must step before the mirror again, make a bold decision, and destroy it. Then darkness and nothingness will yawn towards us. But if we endure steadfastly, light will shine up out of the darkness and reveal an entirely new world to us. Our esoteric work consists in gradually raising our astral and etheric bodies to spiritual heights. But the lower parts of both bodies remain behind in the physical body. The ego lays a peculiar role between these two parts that have, as it were, been torn apart. Through the fact that we've become so firmly attached to material things, it's as if it were chained to the lower parts and is their slave. Thereby peculiar phenomena arise. The astral body that's left to itself may have had certain vices that we could easily control when its better part was still connected with it, but now such qualities grow enormously and a man often feels like a sensualist. If the ego was united with the higher parts, it would control the lower ones from there and therewith all drives, desires and passions. Then the higher parts would also not be unconscious, as they are when the ego is in the lower ones. Because the higher bodies leave the lower ones the latter often become weak. The physical body then tends to get diseases. But this is a temporary condition. For when the higher parts have taken enough forces out of higher worlds, they'll work in a harmonizing and healing way on the lower ones again With respect to these irregular phenomena in his lower bodies an esoteric must tell himself: I will stand fast; I will go on my way to the spiritual world come hell or high water. If he sets up a center against his error, he will also master them. Art is supposed to help us in these battles. All true art was given to us for this. An art that doesn't elevate us can't subsist; it's no true art. When artists will know art's mission, when art is permeated by theosophy, it'll become what it should be for us. When the Gods created man, they gave him defects so that he could test his strength on them. We should thank the Gods for our defects, for combating them makes us strong and free. But we shouldn't love the defects for even a moment. We couldn't thank Gods who made us pure and without defects, because they would have made us into weaklings. We should tell ourselves: And even the world was full of devils we still come from God, Ex Deo nascimur. If we fight seriously and constantly try to get into spiritual worlds, we'll feel that the lower, defective part of us dies. In Christo morimur. And then we'll awaken consciously in higher worlds: Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus. There's an exoteric and an esoteric version of this verse. Used esoterically, the naming of the most sacred name, if it happens unworthily, can unleash earthquakes, storms, lightning and other tremendous events in nature, for if they're wrong even our most hidden thoughts have a destructive effect in spiritual worlds. That's what's meant in the first mystery drama where it says that “Spirits must break worlds if your temporal creating is not to bring destruction and death to the eternities” that is, to repair the damage that men have done with their thoughts. Therefore the esoteric version of this verse is: Ex Deo nascimur, In … morimur, Per Spiritum Sanctum revisiscimus. |
| 266II. From the Contents of Esoteric Classes II: 1910–1912: Esoteric Lesson
12 Feb 1911, Munich Translator Unknown |
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| 266II. From the Contents of Esoteric Classes II: 1910–1912: Esoteric Lesson
12 Feb 1911, Munich Translator Unknown |
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It's important for a modern to be aware of what he's doing and what changes in him when he takes up an esoteric life. We've often heard that two paths take us into spiritual worlds; one of them is when a man descends deep within him to find a connection with God; the other is when he tries to go out into the macrocosm. We have the forces in us that we seek, that created us; we look for them because we don't recognize them and not because we don't have them. In theosophy we learn about both paths that are supposed to balance each other, for a modern is no longer suited to go on one path alone Each path has its dangers, that we'll discuss later, and they're both very difficult. We treat the inner path in our meditations in inspiration, and the outer one through a thorough study of theosophical teachings about world evolution in imagination. This study develops our intellect and also influences our feelings, and after years of thorough study of these ideas, we'll notice that we've become different human beings. Theosophy works on men whether they bring a receptivity for it with them or not. Moderns are divided into two groups—those who seek theosophy because it gives them what they were striving for and those who don't know what to do with it and are opposed to it. Since November, 1879, a few men have become mature enough to take in theosophical teachings, but it's only a small host, whereas other moderns are till unable to acquire the teachings, consider them to be fantastic ideas and dreams or even get angry about them. When people who prove to be receptive for theosophical teachings let the latter work upon them, their etheric body begins to oscillate slightly. Whereas someone who loses himself in external things gets an expanded and rarified etheric body. When such a person hears some spiritual teachings it's as if the wind were blowing through a cleft in the etheric body, which announced itself in him as fear, but appears outwardly as doubt. Such a man only notices the doubts, but they're the expression of fear and anxiety that have moved into his rarified etheric body as into a vacuum and have become noticeable there as doubt. We can't help a man who behaves in a rejective manner. It's better not to bother him with theosophy But wherever an opportunity rises we should quietly let theosophical ideas flow in according to the principle “steady dripping hollows the tone.” For we only have another 400 years or so to give these teachings in a theosophical form to all men. So that everyone will have an opportunity those who resisted them now will be born again in the next four centuries. A suitable number of men must be present then who represent theosophy in the right way. Men could only tread the inner path for a long time before the event of Golgotha. Men who went out into the macrocosm in ancient India would have become lost in it as in darkness and emptiness, because their inner members had a different relationship to each other then. This kind of union with God existed until medieval times, because man changes but slowly. Mystics like Eckhart, Tauler and Molinos teach us the inner path an describe it exactly. Miguel de Molinos speaks of five stages of immersion He says that we must turn away from all creatures that corresponds to the forces of our etheric body, from our talents that correspond to the astral body, and from our ego that coincides with our fourth part and that we must merge with God. But it gradually became necessary for men to tread the inner and outer paths simultaneously, and that's why the Rosicrucian, esoteric schools that taught both ways rose in the 11th and 12th centuries. The writer of the Apocalypse points to the outer path for the first time. He shows us that we must become entirely separated from our personality to treat it. In a modest way he says that he was caught up by the spirit on Patmos Island. This has a particular meaning. In order to tread this outer path or to find the union with the divine in the macrocosm one must choose a firm point from which one concentrates oneself. So John the theologian calculated the stars' position on September 30, 395 A.D. and he had his visions from this point. On that day the sun stood before the Virgo sign and the moon was under her feet. We showed this picture on one of the seven seals. One can also calculate this time exoterically. Scholars have done this and have concluded that John Chrysostum wrote the Apocalypse around this time. But in reality we're touching upon a great secret here, for of course the Apocalypse arose much earlier, and its writer only moved himself ahead into the year 395. Both paths have dangers for which an esoteric must watch. One who takes in theosophical teachings is attacked by many doubts; that's only natural and better than accepting things on faith. Of course he must eliminate these doubts and this will make him stronger. A second danger into which an esoteric can get on this outer path is instability. One who has studied world evolution seriously will have felt that intense interests that he had previously disappear and that he doesn't have a firm hold on anything earthy. The danger here is that one's instability is disguised in the form of a high ideal that one is striving towards or a mission that one has to fulfill. But if we see through this and recognize it as a disguised instability we'll make rapid progress on the right path. In descents into our interior two dangers threaten us. We can have a certain sensual pleasure, a comfortable feeling from the divine through the immersion in us and can thereby fall prey to a fine egotism, so that we turn away from everything that surrounds us and that should still interest. The second danger is that a man can take what approaches him on immersion into himself to be spiritual revelations, when they may just be his own feelings. Medieval mystics didn't have theosophical teachings yet. We don't find the latter anywhere in them. Their union with the divine is like a Neo-Buddhism. They didn't need the outer path yet. Mystics also use the saying In Christo morimur in the form: In Christ we live. |
| 266II. From the Contents of Esoteric Classes II: 1910–1912: Esoteric Lesson
23 Aug 1911, Munich Translator Unknown |
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| 266II. From the Contents of Esoteric Classes II: 1910–1912: Esoteric Lesson
23 Aug 1911, Munich Translator Unknown |
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My dear brothers and sisters! As we know, it's our duty at the beginning of each esoteric lesson to address the Spirit, the regent of the day who helps to direct the earth in world evolution. (Verse for Wednesday) Today we'll go into what one can look upon as the only right and true beginning of clairvoyance. The most important thing in all esoteric activity and inner development is to create calm, inner quiet and to keep it after the actual meditation. After we've meditated on the verses or have done the other things that the masters of wisdom and of the harmony of feelings have given us for our training, we should remain absolutely quiet for awhile. Nothing from everyday life, no memory of it and not even a feeling of our body should press in there. We must feel bodiless and as if empty; we must eliminate thoughts about our own existence and should only accept the fact of our existence. But one shouldn't fall asleep or get into a dream state. Then one has a condition in which clairvoyance can begin. What arises before our inner gaze in such moments comes from the spiritual world. There are ways of telling whether the images that emerge there are purely spiritual or whether they're illusory. What would happen if the etheric body would leave the physical body for even a moment? The physical body would contract, shrivel and become wrinkled; it tends to contract into a very small space and then to eventually dissolve into nothing. The etheric body tends to spread out into the widths of space; then it feels connected with all forces out in space. It fills the physical body and spreads it out to the size it has. Old people get wrinkles through this tendency of the physical body to shrink. The physical body shrinks because the etheric body doesn't work in there anymore like it did when the man was young. Something similar happens to our etheric body during meditation. The etheric body streams and spreads out in space and feels its way into everything. The same is true at the moment of death when the physical body releases the etheric body; this can also last for days. It's a blissful sensation when the etheric body feels as if it's dissolved in space. And things would remain like this until rebirth if the astral body wasn't there to pull the etheric body back together again through its desires, drives and passions; thereby a man enters kamaloca. During meditation one should try—and this can be done after years of effort—to get to the point where one's interior feels illuminated. A man becomes a light that illumines the objects in the spirit world that approach him. The things we perceive in such moments when the soul is very calm aren't like the ones in physical life where we see them from outside, like we see the sun rising on the horizon in the morning. Rather, to stick with the sun example, we feel as if we were in the sun that rises there on the horizon of our clairvoyant consciousness. We feel as if we were divided up in space. But illusory figures arise before us, then, if we bring personal feelings of sympathy and especially of antipathy, improper fondness for certain people, etc. into our meditation. In someone who lies and is dishonest in daily life, the lies stream into space with his etheric body. The dishonestly is rayed back by the things that a pupil sees there, just as a mirror reflects an image of our face and an echo throws back our voice. Then dissembling shapes such as beautiful angel figures appear there, caused by the dishonesty that streams out with the etheric body. Through the relation of these figures to our own dishonesty the latter is increasingly consolidated, and eventually we can't distinguish between truth and lies anymore. Now some of you may think that there must be ways to protect oneself against these delusive images. But as truly as I'm speaking here and am advocating the esotericism behind which stand the masters of wisdom and of the harmony of feelings, so true it is that there's no way to immediately dispel these illusory images an to prevent them from appearing. Only through very patient, steady work on oneself, through the overcoming of dishonesty in oneself, can one gradually get to the point where these illusory things don't appear anymore and lies don't become reflected because they aren't there anymore. Someone who is proud, who begins esoteric training with false ambition, who feel a wild desire to experience all truths of the spiritual world as fast as possible produces errors in himself, thereby. He becomes receptive for all gossip out in the world He likes to stick his nose into men's everyday affairs as he listens eagerly to all sensational comments and phenomena. Then he cannot distinguish between true and false things anymore. That's how ambition and error are connected. Each of us must combat unhealthy cravings for the highest truths, pride, lies and dishonesty in himself. We must raise ourselves to the highest morality in daily life if we want to arrive at the right clairvoyance, which can only emerge from mediations that are done properly. To do these correctly, one must not bring feelings and thoughts about everyday life into them, otherwise one would pollute the etheric substance that should radiate out there. The longer and more intensively the meditations are done, the more intensive their effect is, but one must be a little cautious here. One who notices that he doesn't feel well, gets dizzy or the like, shouldn't mediate too long, and he should think seriously about what he did wrong. One should feel the same after a mediation as before it. We should think about our esoteric life very often. We should know our defects and make it quite clear to ourselves how bad we are. But this knowledge of our badness shouldn't depress us. That would be crass egotism, for through this depression we would show that we thought we were better than we really are, whereas we do have the defects that we acquired ourselves through our previous life and that thereby became our karma. See the defects quite clearly and then start to get rid of them. We must learn to think objectively. Those who say that they're already thinking objectively, are often making a big mistake, for this assumption is only subjective, it's a delusion. Pride or ambition leads to error and superstition; we must not succumb to this. We should confront everything that comes to meet us from whatever side, with an alert, open intellect, clear thinking and sharp logic. We shouldn't swear by what seems right to us at first; investigate it critically, don't give in blindly to something. That's also the way it should be in our esoteric life; no belief in authority is demanded. And my dear sisters and brothers, the masters of wisdom and of the harmony of feelings let me tell you that you should always maintain and use all of your intellectual powers with respect to the wisdom that's given by them, with respect to what I'm justified in advocating here, and also with respect to me. One should approach what's said and advocated here with healthy human understanding, with sensibleness and with an open-minded thinking, if it is only opened far enough. You shouldn't swear by this or that but should judge for yourself. And so we'll summarize everything that this class—which like all esoteric classes should be a sacred one for us—has brought us with the words: In the spirit lay the germ of my body. (Extract from C:) Right after awakening in the morning if one tries to dive back down into the spiritual worlds one came from by emptying one's soul and immersing oneself in one's meditation, one can then attain a memory of one's experiences in spiritual worlds during the night. |
| 266II. From the Contents of Esoteric Classes II: 1910–1912: Esoteric Lesson
26 Aug 1911, Munich Translator Unknown |
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| 266II. From the Contents of Esoteric Classes II: 1910–1912: Esoteric Lesson
26 Aug 1911, Munich Translator Unknown |
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Before we can begin with the esoteric lesson, I'm obliged to tell you something, namely that one of our members from the more intimate circle gave me a brochure, as if driven by a right impulse, and this induces me to say a few things As you know each esoteric pupil, depending on his predisposition, gets exercises that for deeper lying reasons and through their buildup and sequence of word bring about what a pupil needs for his development. The sequence of words is of the greatest importance, also which word is used and where it stands, so that what is intended is attained. Many of you have received the verse: In pure rays of light … as a morning exercise. Now I just received a brochure that contains the following: I see in the pure rays of light It is hard to determine how the writer of this brochure arrived at the formula, for it belongs exclusively to our esoteric school. It could be that one of our students was careless enough to tell it to outsiders. We could also imagine the other case—that actually happened several years ago—that someone meditated in a rooming house, and a man was in the adjacent room who took in these ideas clairvoyantly. We should always have the greatest sympathy for people like the first case mentioned, for as esoterics, we know that everything punishes itself, even if nothing bad was intended. The reason it must have this effect is that every word of the formula was put in its place with the greatest care, and if they are torn out of context, they'll have the opposite effect. One has created a contrary effect through an arbitrary change in the word sequence and through the use of the positive little word “I”—whereas everything was kept in flux and as if objective in the original formula, so that everything is supposed to work through the imaginative picture. Our meditations should always proceed from our inner moral impulses; the other world and especially our personal ego should be excluded completely. We should grasp the Godhead of the world and the way it streams through the world with its divine light in our thoughts quite objectively. Our ego shouldn't become obtrusive here or then the effect would become just the opposite. Quite differently constituted spiritual effects would then have to appear, namely Luciferic effects. In the first line, I see in pure rays of light, the moral impulse that suppresses the ego in all humility and that should e completely devoted to the divine spirit of the world in which one rests while forgetting oneself, doesn't come out. The egotistical principle also emerges strongly in the last lines: I live in the Godhead for something quite different is experienced in the I rest. From this, one sees how very exact and careful we must be so that we also use the words of our meditation quite correctly in our thoughts. We'll now pass on to several images that we can use for our esoteric training because they have a very strong effect. We know that the path to higher worlds first goes through Imagination and then via Inspiration and Intuition. The pictures that shall now be given strengthen the organs that lead to imaginative perception. In our theosophical teachings we've often heard that the world is maya, that we ourselves are nothing but maya, and if even outer science is beginning to explain the world in this way, we should then take this saying even more seriously. If we look at this rose, then, it has an upwards directed flower and a stem directed downwards. But what seems to be there is no true image. Science has taught us that what we see comes about through a crossing of light rays, so that the upside-down image of the rose appears in our eye, whereas we see the outer picture of the rose with the flower up. That's the mirror image of the real light phenomenon in us. From this we see that what we perceive outside is maya, and it's a reverse maya, where down is up. That's the way it is with everything around us; the whole world whose surface we think we see—and ourselves also—is really standing on its head. If we want to perceive the true shape of the world then we mustn't look for mirror images but we must look for the realities behind them before they become reflected in the outer world. Practically everything is the opposite of the way we imagine it. What seems to be up is down; what seems to be behind us is in front; what seems to be left is right, they're really coming from the left; if we see objects standing before us, then in reality forces are there that press towards us from behind. The same is true of the starry heavens. We see it before us when we look up; in reality, it's reflected to our eyes by forces that are behind us. If we want to arrive at the truth in the world, we must ascend from the Spirit of Form to the Spirits of Movement, so that the latter can help us to see what is placed before us as a mirror image by Spirits of Form as the inversion of reality. We can use the following as a symbol to gain practice in this. When we see a rose with a flower on top, we move it down in our thoughts and therewith make a movement that the forces of the Spirits of Movement can symbolize for us. But there is one thing in man that is no mere sensory illusion, that's no maya. This is the word that resounds from men, the living word, the logos. The word doesn't come to us from outside, it's something alive in us, it's our real being. It streams out of our soul life; we who let the word stream out over our lips are it ourselves with all of our feelings. And if we top to think that the word is the Logos and that everything that's spoken in the world is spoken out of this source, we'll then feel a deep responsibility towards the word. Only what men have said in their words will survive the earth and pass over to the next planetary condition. As we said, what we hear from the left comes from the right, but the sound that we utter is the only thing that's no different from what it seems to be. It sounds forth from within and it really comes from within. Divine beings, the Logos, speak to us out of it. |
| 266II. From the Contents of Esoteric Classes II: 1910–1912: Esoteric Lesson
19 Nov 1911, Munich Translator Unknown |
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| 266II. From the Contents of Esoteric Classes II: 1910–1912: Esoteric Lesson
19 Nov 1911, Munich Translator Unknown |
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Today we'll clarify how one should answer questions that approach one in esoteric life. An esoteric should never answer: “What is the heart?” by saying that it's the cause of blood circulation, for he shouldn't give physical causes for things. Everything physical, all of our organs and the whole human being are only symbols of something spiritual, of what higher hierarchies have created. Spirits of Motion already worked on our blood circulation on the old Sun. Then Spirits of Form descended and pressed forms and signs on all created things; and so the heart is only a sign for work that higher hierarchies did on us. Everything that surrounds us is just maya. Good Gods created this world of maya for men, as it were, like a flower out of the real world so that man develops through it, kindles his ego on it, and penetrated it to get back to the world of real things once again. A man definitely needs this world of maya in his present condition. That's the way one should interpret Goethe's saying: for what is this beautiful world, the starry heavens there except for man to be delighted by it? This is a seemingly naïve expression for the fact that the world in this form and as we perceive it with our physical senses is really only there for us. For in reality, in the world of real things, everything appears with its spiritual causes behind it. The world of maya doesn't exist for minerals, plants and up through cold-blooded animals. But it exists for warm-blooded animals, although the latter have no ego that could become ignited by it. These animals give a clairvoyant the impression that they have been brought into evolutionary conditions that they're not adapted to, and this upsets one. That's why the humanoid apes give one such a grotesque impression. As we should become ever more aware, an esoteric should wrest himself away from maya and connect himself with the world of real things. He can only do this through the meditations from the spiritual worlds that are given by the masters of wisdom and of the harmony of feelings, those personalities who support the work of the higher hierarchies. For instance, they gave a concentration exercise that enables us to help in the work on evolution. It may take hours and many attempts, but if an esoteric concentrates on the place where he feels the heart in him, he'll notice that his thoughts don't remain with the heart he's concentrating on—they ray or pour out from there, and he'll see something like a rising, shining star whose center is the archetype of what the heart is the sign for. And the star's lines and rays will begin to resound and the sounds will become words, the primal words that created the heart out of the world of real things. And when the words are translated they're the words of the prayer to the Sunday spirit: Great embracing Spirit, many archetypes sprouted out of your life. (See EL 58) The star's rays are always the words: You were. Whereas the lines in between are the other words. Thus an esoteric arrives at such an experience through correct, serious exercises. Although many don't do their mediations intensely enough, one who does can penetrate the world of real things, and depending on what he brings with him, he'll feel comfortable or repelled by it. The latter gives him pain and suffering, but necessarily so. For the good Gods can only tolerate what fits into their world; everything else is rejected. An esoteric may often still have qualities that he's not fully aware of but which work on his development and that he's made aware of by certain indications. If an esoteric does his exercises diligently and correctly, and he wakes up at night with a feverish feeling, he can oppose this with a psychic coldness; and then he has a definite feeling that he's not alone, that he has awakened a doppelganger in himself through his esoteric training. Who is that? And what does he want? The good Gods have, as it were, hired certain Luciferic spirits to keep the qualities of men that don't belong in their world out of it. One of them is Samael, who counteracts our hate and envy. We notice him through the feverishness that befalls us as long as we're still full of these defects. Another being becomes active if an esoteric hasn't overcome a certain untruthfulness that we're all guilty of, and that often lies so deep in our subconsciousness that we don't notice it. For instance, someone may decide to go to a theosophical meeting in another city because it would be instructive and good for him. But in reality he has quite different motives for going there, for instance, he wants to meet somebody there, but he doesn't admit this real reason to himself. Another dishonesty that's hard to notice is the following. We often think that enthusiasm is driving us into spiritual worlds, whereas we only want to wallow in the enjoyment of the feeling that results from occupying oneself with such things. Now if we do our exercises correctly and we want to press into spiritual worlds, we might get a feeling of being choked or of someone sitting on our chest. The Luciferic being who causes this is Azazel. He hinders us from entering the spiritual world before we've gotten rid of all lies. If we do our daily duties in a lazy, inattentive and careless way, we might have a drowning feeling on awaking, as if our air was cut off and we were melting and flowing away. The attention that we should pay to the surrounding world is of greater importance than most people think. If we exercise with real joy, it's a big help in pressing into spiritual worlds. For we should think of the spiritual causes behind every thing and encounter. Spiritual beings have to do what we don't do, because the work must be done. Here's an example of how inattentively we often do our work. A new educational program was being started at a school, and all its teachers had to take an exam. The humane school inspector told himself: I won't ask the older teachers what they learned at the seminar long ago—they wouldn't remember it. I'll only ask them what they taught every day. But it turned out that many of these teachers did not know what they'd had their students repeat to them maybe twenty times. That's how little they'd been paying attention. Like these teachers, we're often not thinking about our work. And the being who has to make adjustments for this is called Azael in occult parlance. These three things are direct defects. A fourth quality we must also get rid of is avoiding one's karma, instead of courageously going to meet it. Under such circumstances if we want to press into the world of real things, we'll wake up in the morn with a feeling of being fettered, as if we were returning to a prison, and our whole body will hurt. This is brought about by Mehazael. Of course exoterics must also bear the consequences of their defects, but they become manifest in them differently—as corporeal diseases for instance—and they don't become aware of why they got something like that. An esoteric should gradually bring everything into his consciousness, and esoteric schools help him with this. Of course what we perceive of such a school with our senses is only a very small part of it—a faint, outer sign. Just as everything physical, also sensations that we perceive, are only symbols for realities, so what an esoteric school looks like on the physical plane is only a symbol for what it is on the spiritual one. When such a school forms, it's mostly the case that a man immerses himself say in the heart through concentration. The experience forms itself into a formula in him which he can pass on to a number of pupils, whereby they're reconnected with spiritual realities. Our closing mantra expresses this creative force that's active in the spiritual. In the spirit lay the germ of my body. |
| 266II. From the Contents of Esoteric Classes II: 1910–1912: Esoteric Lesson
10 Jan 1912, Munich Translator Unknown |
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| 266II. From the Contents of Esoteric Classes II: 1910–1912: Esoteric Lesson
10 Jan 1912, Munich Translator Unknown |
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What we want to attain through esoteric exercises is to concentrate completely on one thought and afterwards to let an empty space arise in us and to wait for what flows to us as a result of our meditation What we attain thereby depends on the intensity of the perseverance that we have applied to this. One might think that one gets ahead faster by changing exercises, but the most profound esoterics have always said that they got the furthest by doing the same exercise with patience and perseverance for years. One might get a spiritual exercise from someone and then not see him again on this earth. But if this exercise is done correctly and the pupil's karma is favorable, it can last him a whole lifetime and bear fruits for him until he finally finds his teacher in the spiritual world. When an esoteric applies forces to his inner development, he'll notice that certain bad qualities had become more manifest. One of these is criticism, but an esoteric should realize how this desire to knock other people down arises. We heighten and intensify our egoity through the exercises, and criticizing is a desire to assert oneself, a wanting to be something special, a need to separate oneself. An esoteric loses interest in many outer things that he paid a lot of attention to previously. This goes so far that some esoterics have the feeling they can't see as well as before. Most of them also complain that their memory isn't as good. But as we pointed out in previous classes this not paying attention to one's environment is a mistake. It can happen that someone doesn't do his exercises intensively enough to fill the inner emptiness with spiritual content, which he now no longer wants to fill with his previous interests. This gives him an urgent feeling, a driving restlessness, a need to fill his inner emptiness from outside. Then he's easily tempted to criticize outer things. In a way, this criticizing is understandable and justified, for after a man first closed himself off from the outer world and now steps out of himself again, he would like to assert himself against the world. But there's an egotism in this that should be suppressed together with the criticizing. When we attain this the forces that we would have wasted otherwise will turn inwards and fructify our soul life. The need to separate himself is something that's quite justified for an esoteric, for he can only make progress in solitude. The feeling of loneliness is unbearable for most ordinary mortals, but an esoteric should learn to tolerate solitude. This promotes his esoteric life a great deal. A man who longs for company dissipates his forces through this longing. It's as if this longing sprayed out from him in all directions He should gather thee forces and turn them inwards instead. That way he'll gain a great deal. An esoteric must bring two qualities into equilibrium like pendulum swings, first the tolerance of solitude, that is, the strengthening of egoity, and secondly complete devotion to the duty that approaches us from outside, to the point of self-sacrifice or the forgetting of oneself. When we've gotten to the point where our heart longs for solitude in the midst of our surroundings, where the latter makes us suffer and we nevertheless give it our full, devoted love—then we've attained the unification of apparently contradictory qualities. A third thing we should practice is to be silent about our esoteric experiences. An undeveloped man almost explodes if he has to keep a secret, and he feels very relieved if he can get things off his chest. But an esoteric should consider that this force that threatens to blow one up must be a very strong one if one prefers to store it up inwardly. That's why it says, “Learn to be silent and you'll get the power”—that is, the power to rule things within one. For instance, an occult investigator can perceive how much stronger a man gets when he has to suppress the telling of a secret for some reason. Say that a man has something on his soul that he would like to tell a friend. Intending to rush over to him, he meets another acquaintance at the door, but he doesn't want to tell this one about it. Later it's too late to go to his friend, so he has to suppress his urge to communicate. An occultist will see that the soul in such a person has developed a force that wouldn't have arisen if the man had fulfilled his wish to make his communication. The saying: “The mouth speaks out of the heart's abundance” shouldn't apply to an esoteric. It might sometimes be good and appropriate for a nonesoteric to tell all, but not for an esoteric. By communicating his innermost feelings and thoughts, he sprays out forces that would have been very necessary for his soul. Every time we're able to keep thoughts and feelings to ourselves, especially ones that are connected with our esoteric experiences and difficulties, we acquire a soul force that we can't lose. One should speak about universally human things and about things that can be useful to people, but not about one's own affairs that are nobody else's business. Where does this need to communicate come from anyway? We seldom feel the need to go to other men because we love them selflessly, but usually because they have qualities that give us something. We should also drop the wish to be coddled. We should be grateful to people if they treat us badly, because then we can exercise our tolerating forces. We should try to love these people anyway, and we'll then notice that this is the right thing to do. An esoteric should also stop complaining. What does he complain about? Mostly about the thoughts that storm in on him from all sides when he begins his meditation. But he should be thankful for this and look upon it as progress that he notices how real the thought world is and that it can assert itself like this. He should just oppose it because he'll get stronger thereby We should figure out how these thoughts do it, look upon them as models of how we can concentrate ourselves and tell ourselves: We should immerse ourselves in meditation with the same intensity—then we'll attract spiritual forces that support us. It would be a very comfortable meditation if angels or other spiritual beings would come beforehand to sweep away the undesired thoughts. Once an esoteric has overcome all of these qualities and has learned to speak the right amount, he'll arrive at what mystics called the portal of death, because he finds himself in the same condition as a man who has turned all of his interests away from the outer world as he gets ready to die. He has turned inwards or toward divine spiritual things. That's what's meant in the second part of our Rosicrucian verse: In Christo morimur; we die in Christ when we transform ourselves completely and turn toward the spiritual world again. Ex Deo nascimur: We're born from God and must incarnate in the physical. Then it's our task to develop so that we can say; In Christo morimur. We turn away from all physical things and raise ourselves to the spiritual that was always called the Holy Spirit, and in this we are reborn: Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus. The verse that masters of wisdom and of the harmony of feeling gave us: In the spirit lay the germ of my body. |
| 266II. From the Contents of Esoteric Classes II: 1910–1912: Esoteric Lesson
26 Feb 1912, Munich Translator Unknown |
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| 266II. From the Contents of Esoteric Classes II: 1910–1912: Esoteric Lesson
26 Feb 1912, Munich Translator Unknown |
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It's only natural that in the course of years our esoteric lectures should get ever more complicated and be built up on ones that have already been given. But since our esoteric movement is growing steadily the main disadvantage to this is that things get a little superficial. The ideal would be to have a small group that strives for ever more deepening. One way to counteract the flattening would be if new members would turn trustingly to ones who've been listening to these lectures for years and catch up that way. In general, it would be good if people would chatter less and think more about spreading esoteric teachings in our circles and also about taking them in. It's not the right thing for so many of our members to concentrate their trust so much on one person, that is, mainly on me as the more or less karmic instrument for the spreading of these teachings. Newcomers should turn trustfully to older members in personal and daily affairs, and only get advice from me in questions of esoteric development. Trust is a factor that's very important in the life of a lodge, and the ability to give advice increases in those who are asked for it. We have many physicians in our movement whom I trust completely, as can always be observed. Our members could turn to them in many health matters. There's a particularly strong esoteric life in this place and perfect work is done. Of course some polar disadvantage arise, especially through the coming in of people who don't realize what serious and sacred thing the esoteric life is. It should be impossible for someone who devoted himself to esoteric life to think of leaving it for an external reason, because that only proves how insincere his decision was right from the beginning. Karma creates a quiet destiny for some people the moment they become esoterics so that they can move their exercises into the center of their life. Others run into events which they can't bring into harmony with their esoteric life, sometimes to such a great extent that their esoteric life suffers from it. Of course, the ideal would be if we would irradiate our whole life from our esoteric center, if we had always directed our gaze at it. Something that especially harms esoteric development is the untested, superficial and therefore objectively incorrect criticism that we often direct at people. I'm not saying that criticizing is wrong, but it should always be directed to facts and not at people whom one doesn't happen to like. Our exercises seem to be something very simple, and yet they're something that works on us more strongly than anything we can encounter in life. What do they bring about? Through them, we're supposed to loosen our etheric body from within and pull it out. At some point in our exercises it'll happen that we don't see, hear or feel anymore, and this happens through the loosening of the etheric body. There are many methods to bring it out, but such external methods that aren't based on meditation are harmful to organs, since the etheric body is repelled form outside, by the eyes, for instance, and they then suffer from this. Only some forces are loosened by meditative withdrawal, so that enough of them are left to maintain biological functions. When we get into this state of not hearing things, etc., we've left our physical body. Although many of us have been doing these exercises for years, we haven't been able to do this. Why not? People get an uncomfortable feeling before they leave their body, so they resist this instinctively. A man opposed this stepping out of the etheric body more than anything else Even thinking about it hinders it. It's almost like a reflex motion, that one immediately recoils when this feeling comes over one. The reason one resists this is that when a pupil has developed enough intensity to leave his body, he suddenly realizes what a sublime, wonderful temple this body with all of its organs is, and then when he looks at what went out he sees that it's an ugly worm, and this worm resists, because he's shocked at his own ugliness. And then we realize how endless the path to perfection is. We receive a force through our exercises, and this should pour out from within. Someone may tell us: Nothing is pouring in me. And that's not surprising if he doesn't do his exercises energetically enough and if he rates many everyday interests much higher than his esoteric work. The first feeling that we get through the etheric body's loosening is a heaviness in the brain and in the whole physical body, which we feel is a weight that doesn't belong to us. We feel that this wonderful structure that's the greatest thing about us is weak and perishable. We made it that way. Divine beings made it increasingly perfect since Saturn, and the Saturn and Sun forces in it are upbuilding ones that would sustain it. But we got something into it with Moon forces, astral things, and earth forces, the ego, that turns these forces outwards in order to transmit percepts to the ego through sense organs. Now in the course of a pupil's training he feels that his senses are a destructive force, a poisonous substance that's inserted in his organism. Just as the astral body and ego were incorporated, so the nervous system, brain and senses had to be transformed so that they could not receive from outside what had previously streamed out through them from within. At this moment a man understood the real cause of death, and in the ancient mysteries one called this: Standing at the portal of death. Now the I is supposed to make all the things it did wrong good again and to perfect all of its bodies so that we become a true man. It's true that the expression “man” is often not used in the high sense that really underlies it, but an esoteric should always look upon the making of himself into a man as his highest striving. So we should let all imperfect things die in the one whose name is so sacred to us that we don't name him, in order to come back to life again in the perfect, in the Holy Spirit. |
| 266II. From the Contents of Esoteric Classes II: 1910–1912: Esoteric Lesson
01 Sep 1912, Munich Translator Unknown |
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| 266II. From the Contents of Esoteric Classes II: 1910–1912: Esoteric Lesson
01 Sep 1912, Munich Translator Unknown |
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An esoteric has to pay attention to things that are irrelevant to an exoteric. For instance, he should keep in mind that the truth he strives for can only be a relative truth, that as an esoteric one can't speak of eternal truths at all. Our wishes always mix into our striving and we must tell ourselves that we'd rather accept a truth that pleases us than one that doesn't. For instance, the thought of immortality is more appealing to most people than the one that everything is over at death, and so they tend to accept it as a truth just for that reason. But an esoteric should not do this. He should exclude his personal wishes and then investigate. Meditations are given for this in which we should, as it were, rest spiritually in a particular thought content. It's more important to let our soul rest in the meditation than to think about its content, for our soul forces become strengthened through this continued repetition. The tendency to believe in and defend absolute eternal truths is an attribute of our consciousness soul. Now it's possible that the latter no longer controls these ideas but is controlled by them and pours them outwards. In occultism one calls a consciousness soul with these ideas an “inner Sadducee.” We all have such an inner Sadducee in us, and an esoteric has the duty to feel this and to adapt himself accordingly. The intellectual or mind soul can also have something like a second man in it, and that's when someone wants to set up a personally recognized truth as a generally valid one. A man does this out of a certain feeling of shame, because he doesn't want to say: “I've recognized this truth through this or that experience and therefore it's a truth for me,” but he'd like to set it up as one that's generally valid. In occultism one calls him a Pharisee. The inner Pharisee is the intellectual soul which takes over in this direction. This desire to set up personal truths often leads to hypocrisy and dishonesty. One can also let the sentient soul predominate too much in its striving for truth. This is done by people who would rather wallow in feelings than take in teachings about the world evolution and elaborate them, who for instance would rather immerse themselves in Tauler or some other medieval mystic and who reject everything else. Since the sentient soul is fairly distant from the consciousness soul it doesn't bring its defects to expression in such an unpleasant way as the latter does; and yet it's a mistake for an esoteric to turn away from everything that the outer world can tell him and to only look for truth in inner immersion. In occultism one calls this way of letting the sentiment soul predominate the “inner Essene.” One could object that an Essene is someone who's quite good. Of course he is, but the spiritual leaders who founded this order knew the right time and place and how to set it up so that it was salutary for the world. The main thing in occult striving is to know which truth is the right one for the particular age. Buddha knew this quite well when he brought his teaching to India at about 500 B.C. To transplant the same teaching elsewhere at a different time doesn't have the same effect The important thing is to know how something can be made effective. At certain times nodal points form in spiritual worlds, when forces work into the worlds that lie directly above us. Such a time is here now. Great initiates can't bring these forces down from the highest worlds—only Christ can do this because he went through the Mystery of Golgotha. But Buddha, Pythagoras, Zarathustra and other great initiates gather round the Christ and let themselves be influenced by his forces, regardless of whether or not they're incarnated. And they work out of this spirit. We should bring these three men who live in us—Sadducee, Pharisee, and Essene—into a relationship, because each one by himself is something harmful. The Pharisee should serve the Sadducee, and both of them should serve the Essene. The latter should rule over the two but shouldn't rule by himself. As esoterics, we should really get the feeling that we have these three in us, for when we get to the threshold's guardian we'll feel them very distinctly, and we'll feel that we must leave them behind as something perishable, as something that doesn't belong in the spiritual world. If one says that an Essene works with spiritual worlds one must answer that he works with them in the physical world in the way that's appropriate for him, but that his whole order was founded for a particular place on earth, and that one proceeds from other viewpoints in spiritual worlds. If we step before the Gods with these three defects that we feel to be nakedness, we'll have a feeling of shame such as naked Adam and Eve had before God, and so we must try to harmonize these three attributes. The spiritual world is surrounded by sheaths that we create ourselves and which we must dissolve. One does not find knowledge by seeking within. It can come to one when the sun sinks into a calm sea and we let this phenomenon work on us intensively. A right life with nature has an awakening, promoting effect on an esoteric, but he shouldn't devote himself to it exclusively. Nikolaus V. Kues had very strong spiritual experiences on a sea voyage from Constantinople. A Master of Wisdom and of the Harmony of Feelings has compressed help and support into a prayer, like the sea into a drop—something like that is possible in the spiritual but of course not in the physical—and he wishes us to always close our esoteric classes with this verse that describes man's whole descent and ascent: In the spirit lay the germ of my body. |