The Rudolf Steiner Archive

If an esoteric mediates on these lines and the diagram they give him much strength. During the Saturn period there was only a warmth globe on which the spirits of darkness attained their human stage. The blood we had then was dark. There was a hidden fire or warmth on the planet, but no light. When Saturn disappeared, the Sun rose from the darkness, the second, air element with its oxygen made Saturn's glimmer burst into flames, and then there was light, as is symbolized by the alchemist's sulfur. Blood turned from black to yellow.

During the Moon period the whole atmosphere was watery, but not like the water we know. It was divided into spherical drops that moved past each other with tremendous speed. One finds this condition of Moon substance in quicksilver, that also divides into very small spheres and is more mobile than all other substances. During the Moon period blood was as white as this substance, and it was given forms by the world tone. These forms are female. The whole Moon represents the female principle.

The fourth, earth element appeared during the Earth period in connection with the third alchemistic substance—salt, the symbol of crystallization and dissolution. This is where the male element appears. Our present men with their red blood are shaped on the earth. Everything that dissolves is salt.

Thus we have four kinds of fire in the four kinds of blood: black on old Saturn, yellow on old Sun, white on old Moon and red on earth. The warmth that now lives in our blood is the warmth of the planet Saturn. All these bloods or fires are still in us and are instruments for spirits who work in and on us, until we'll be individualized enough to do what these spirits do. The air we inhale is the instrument, bearer or body of a certain kind of spirit. The light rays that pass into our eyes have a light spirit in them who works upon our eyes. Saturn spirits find a point of attack in the warmth of the blood and ego. Some of them are very bad and dangerous.

The verse above shows the way to control our instruments. The four kinds of fire refer to our four lower sheaths that are the “children” of the I. They must be “burned in the fire of the spirit,” so that they can become a fourfold philosophical fire in the Vulcan period. We must “add fire to fire,” that is, the fiery, lower passions must be purified by uniting them with the higher, spiritual fire.

We might get a clearer idea of how this happens if we consider that our whole life is filled with four kinds of activity. We perceive the surroundings with our physical senses. We feel sympathy or antipathy for others with our life body. We feel wishes and emotions with our desires body. We draw conclusions and make decisions with our intellect. That's the most important part, that we form conclusions and decisions. We can change our opinions about a thing, but a done deed remains, and the result of a whole planetary period depends upon the decisions that were made during it. Just as fire leaves ashes of the burnt material behind, so a resolve or decision leaves something good or bad behind forever. That's why an occult principle says: when in doubt, do nothing.

The ashes that a thought leaves strengthen bones, and so people with rickets do better if they think abstractly. Our sympathy or antipathy works on the etheric body. We can easily see this through ordinary observation. We know that the etheric body controls glands. A gourmet drools when he sees good food. The glands in our body dry out and become like the bark of a tree that protects the interior to the extent that we learn to control ourselves and to bring our sympathy or antipathy into harmony. Saps rise and fall in a plant, and in winter it dies because it has no protection from the cold. Whereas a tree allows its outer side to dry out and become bark; this protects it from the cold and storms. That's the way an initiate is; his life body doesn't die from one incarnation to the next. That's the way Druids were, and “Druid” means oak—the strongest tree.

Blood is the I's instrument. Saturn spirits work in the warmth of our blood, as Christ worked in Jesus' blood from age 30 on. Before that Jesus had worked on his physical, etheric and astral bodies. Then Christ took hold of the blood and purified it during the three years. That's why blood had to flow. When we've purified our four bodies in the same way we'll then have the four-fold philosophical fire that belongs to the Vulcan period.

A man had spiritual vision and knowledge in earlier stages of development. His body was a kind of resting place for him in which he could sleep and lose his consciousness while he was in it. As his being became increasingly conscious on the physical plane his spiritual perception and cognition decreased. When man became very interested in things around him he lost his spiritual vision and cognition entirely, and a dense veil covered spiritual things. This interest in outer sense phenomena is called estimatio in occultism, and estimatio is a poison that brings death. It takes away consciousness of the continued existence of the I and thereby brings a consciousness of birth and death with it. It blots out consciousness of the I and the memory of continued life. Consciousness must not be withdrawn from the outer world entirely, for then it wouldn't take the essence of what it gained from outer experiences with it. However this is the case in imagination. It must not be completely inactive; a man must be able to direct his consciousness at a picture of his action at will. A man wouldn't be able to raise his hand if he couldn't imagine it pictorially. When he raises his hand the picture and action are present simultaneously. If he begins to make mental images without an action, that is, if he unites his consciousness with the imagined picture he'll then regain the ability to see astral things. This stage is called imago. When the soul attains complete peace or quiet so that it remains completely peaceful no matter what approaches it, then its consciousness will be able to penetrate the veil of the harmony of the spheres. This means transmutatio through inspiritation or incatatio. When glands were created on old Sun it happened through a process that's similar to the one that takes place in our body when someone thinks of food and this makes his mouth water. Glands were created on old Sun by higher beings who, as it were, tasted the surroundings and secreted the gland substance that was absorbed by physical bodies. Adrenal glands secrete a substance that promotes bone building. The pancreas transforms sugar into substances that are good for nutrition. Secretion of the glands is a process that's brought about by soul processes.

When man lived in an astral or picture consciousness so that his spirit could go into spiritual realms at will, some beings remained at this stage. This stage remained crystallized in them, as it were, and birds represent this in a crystallized form. Birds like eagles who have such a wonderful eye, have crystallized astral vision. Mammals crystallized the stage where man tried to control his body's movements. These animals attained this only partially and therefore remained behind at a lower stage of evolution.

Man gains interest in the physical world through perception or estimatio. It's this interest that fetters him to the physical world. One can grow out of this by seeing the spiritual behind things in the sense world. In an earlier stage of consciousness men had imaginatio and no estimatio for physical things, and even earlier they had incantatio or inspiratio. Moderns usually only have estimatio during the day, and they have imaginatio at night. Men are unproductive in daytime; they used to be much more productive. Moderns are only productive during sleep. Consciousness arises when the astral body and ego destroy the physical and etheric bodies during the day. When the astral body and ego become aware of their physical surroundings it's as if the nerves were being torn to pieces.

Corporeal tiredness arises from the destructive, deadly effect of the astral body and ego on the etheric and physical bodies. The streaming of the physical world into man's organism has a poisonous, destructive effect.

At night the ego and astral body take in the forces of the spiritual world and stream them into the physical and etheric bodies. They surround the physical body with pictures that have a healing effect on it. The first thing a man sees when the spiritual world opens before him for the first time is his physical body. This picture of the physical body has a healing effect on him. Likewise the astral body and ego work upon the rest of man in a strengthening, healing way at night through true pictures out of the spiritual world. They stream into the ripped nerve strands and destroyed organism. Thereby forces from the spiritual world stream in at night that eliminate tiredness from the body.

Tiredness mainly arises from interest in things. No tiredness is caused if one looks at something without personal interest. For instance, say someone really likes a tasty food. Thereby he has a personal interest in the food because it stimulates his gums. It has quite a different effect on a man if he knows his connection with the cosmos and that he's at a stage where he has a physical body that needs food. This affects his organism differently than if he only eats food for pleasure. A man must get to know spiritual things through the physical body, and then he loses interest in physical things.

A man should look upon estimatio as the low point in evolution. He must grow out of this into the imaginatio that he had previously. But if he connects himself with the physical world he goes below the lowest point and can no longer ascend. It's very important for a man to learn to occupy himself with things that lie beyond the physical plane, with ideas and concepts that are super-sensible. Exercises are given to this end. The longer and more patiently a pupil practices certain ideas, the more he learns to overcome personal interests and to ascend to imaginatio. Then a man becomes productive instead of just taking in things from outside. He then streams something from within out into the world. One rightly says that man has the sun and moon in him. When he looks at things without personal interest he streams a spiritual light onto them; he becomes a sun who illumines things. They reflect his light. The surroundings that reflect his light become a moon.

Correct ideas have a healing effect on man, and wrong ideas make him sick. One can find a wrong idea behind every disease, if one traces it back. Mankind in general is responsible for this and not individuals. Interest also has a destructive effect when people run from one sensation to the other and always want to be amused. That makes people sick. It's also a hindrance to progress to have a personal interest in higher knowledge. Men become scleroticized thereby. A man must not become indifferent to his surroundings. He must retain his feeling and sympathy for his surroundings. Some say that sympathy can also come from egotism. That may be the case. Many kinds of sympathy only arise because one doesn't want to see other people suffer. That's even a good thing. It's better for a man to help someone out of egotistical sympathy than not to help him at all. But we must learn to develop a sympathy that stands above egoism, that helps neighbors because it's one's duty to help them.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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