The Rudolf Steiner Archive

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

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

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

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

Appeal to the spirit of Saturday.

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

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

Appeal to the spirit of Saturday.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Esoteric development must be different in different ages, otherwise successive incarnations would be meaningless. But certain things remain the same throughout the ages. For instance, we find that Egyptian esoterics speak of: Arriving at the threshold of death, a walk into the nether world, an experience of the four elements, seeing the sun at midnight, and meeting spiritual beings face to face.

We can't explain all that's meant by this now, but some of the simple things will be mentioned.

One feeling that esoteric life can give rise to is that waking life seems to be just a sleeping life. This is not a mood that we could continually arouse in us, and it should never be our intention to let certain momentary esoteric moods spread out over our whole life. If we did that we wouldn't be fit to do our duties in the outer world. To be sure, as an esoteric sees nature's kingdoms around him, he should occasionally experience a mood of longing to press through to what lies behind them, to true reality, to what we're striving for, and compared with which all ordinary sense impressions have no more value than those from sleep. One who wanted to live in such esoteric moods all the time would have to withdraw into a kind of a monk's life. But that is not the kind of esotericism for which Rosicrucianism strives. One who would like to withdraw like that would have to be aware that he acquires certain privileges with respect to his fellow men, so that he can thereby prepare himself for several lives in the outer world, but that if all men wanted to live like him, no progress in human evolution would be possible.

Our exercises are designed to bring us into the spiritual world, but through inattentiveness we often don't notice the progress that we make thereby. One can arrive at the feeling that we make very poor use of the forces of thinking, feeling and willing that are poured out in us, but that in our present condition it would be impossible for us to lie in that thinking, feeling and willing—it would shatter and destroy us. Ancients called the feeling of standing before an experience that wants to overpower us: The arrival at the threshold of death. For there one felt: what I'm experiencing now I can't master with my thinking, my feeling or my willing; now I know what it feels like to have died. Most of you have probably gone through this many times. It's due to inattentiveness that one isn't aware of this. During meditation one will have often had the feeling that one was absent for a moment, and then when one come back to oneself, one thinks: I was sleeping. If one took the trouble to find out what one went through in such moments, one would sense that maybe they were the most tremendous experiences that one ever lived through.

Another experience is this one. It doesn't have to come after the first one. One can get the impression that the second experience is the first because one slept through the first one. One has the feeling that one is sitting in one's body, that one is carrying it with one. Just as one can distinguish a weight that's attached to one's arm from the arm muscles, so one learns to feel that one's arms are weights that one drags with one. Then one can have the feeling that one is sitting fettered in a nether world—not corporeally, but psychically all the more. This is what they called going into the nether world. In one's exercises one then feels as if one was paralyzed and then as if lukewarm water was being poured over one.

One can also have the feeling that the bad thoughts that we have are not just thoughts but are something real. If we thought something bad about a person we see this like a shooting arrow that can insure the person's soul more than a physically shot arrow could hurt his body. As soon as we see what we do, thereby, we notice that the arrow flies back at us an burns us like fire, as if we were in the netherworld's flames. This is the so-called going through the elements. It doesn't have to be seen as a vision, one can feel it on oneself as if one had burn wounds all over one. When we feel like this, we, as it were, send forces out of our etheric body which however can only go to the boundary of our aura. There they meet the cosmos' forces working everywhere in this surroundings that make these forces turn around and direct them to certain centers where they bring out super-sensible organs. It's as with physical eyes that were formed out of indifferent organs by light. As long as light worked on them, one couldn't see yet. This only became possible when they were finished. Likewise we can only use our higher organs after we've built them up in the described way.

Our occult exercises are supposed to bring us to imaginative knowledge. Not so long ago they had imaginations that could be understood by any pupil without further explanation. Today such imaginations must be explained in words, because very few esoterics would be able to understand them by themselves. An imagination will now be given here that's useful for any esoteric who has the feeling that he's not making any progress in spite of his efforts. The pupil should imagine that his teacher or master is standing before him in the shape of Moses, and that the latter asks him: “So you'd like to know why you're not getting ahead on the esoteric path?” “Yes.” “I'll tell you why. It's because you worship the golden calf.” Then the pupil sees the golden calf next to Moses. The latter lets fire come up from the earth that consumes the golden calf and turns it to powder. He throws this powder into some clear water and gives the mixture to the pupil to drink. A few centuries ago any esoteric would have been able to understand this image. Now it must be explained as follows.

When we go back in our memory, we get to a point where our memories stop and ego-consciousness began. What lies before that is what we made out of ourselves in previous incarnations and brought into this one. That's the golden calf that we worship without realizing it—our sheath nature.

The pupil should now replace the image of the golden calf with the image of what he was as a child, before he had an ego-consciousness. He becomes fully aware that what he feels is his ego is just a Luciferic effect. For, ordinary consciousness is based on memory and memory is a Luciferic force, since it's Lucifer's task to carry the past over into the present. If one strips oneself of what one has through ego-consciousness, then what remains is what we've brought with us from other earth lives.

Some people may feel that it's hard to have to think of themselves like that, but we won't be prepared to meet the Guardian of the Threshold without strict concepts like that.

Then the pupil should imagine that fire burns the child's form that he is; he's become a little bigger since then, but basically he's still the same sheath man that the child was, except that the illusion of an ego has been added. He sees how the form turns to powder, and this becomes a strong awareness that all parts of these physical, etheric and astral sheaths must become as indifferent to him as a pile of ashes, as indifferent as clay is for a sculptor before he's made something out of it. He must think away his physical body and its outer shape, his etheric body with its memory, his astral body with its sympathies and antipathies—or think that they are a pile of ashes.

One might not be able to put this into practice right away. It doesn't mean that one should suddenly hug someone one disliked, but when we carry out this imagination as an exercises, we must be able to get rid of all antipathies.

And the powder is thrown into the pure water of divine substance, the way it was before the Luciferic force worked on it. This is how the sheath nature is to be sacrificed and the divine substance is to be given back. But an esoteric also arrives at the insight that everything that's now only a pile of dust for him was formed out of the spirit. His body's shape was sculpted by the spirit, the spirit made him into what he now is as a form. And we should take what the spirit has made out of us back into ourselves. We should drink the water again in which the dust was dissolved. Then we have it pure, after the golden calf was burned, pulverized and dissolved. If we do this, we'll feel that a whole place in us seems to become empty; it's the place where the ego usually is—we feel that this is getting empty. When one can either become a Buddhist and go into a region for which a man should feel that he's too worthy—into nirvana, into an extraterrestrial sphere. Or one can arrive at a new awareness of the Christ impulse and can feel it stream into the place of our ego that has become empty.

Christ would never have been able to come to earth among the Hebrew people if Moses hadn't destroyed the golden calf, thrown it into water, and given it to Israel's children to drink. This doesn't mean that one should do this imagination every day—but maybe every 3 or 4 weeks. It's basically just another clarification of our Rosicrucian verse.

Last time an imagination was placed before our soul that liberated forces that can be of help to us on our occult path. Today two inspiring thoughts shall appear before your soul that can be effective in the same way. The essential thing about such thoughts and questions is that we let them rest in our soul for awhile, that we let them speak to us without doing much with them.

People have occupied themselves with these thoughts a great deal, but in a quite different way, so that they've led men to impossible commentaries and disputes. Grasped esoterically, they're of help to occult pupils. The first of these inspiring thoughts is the “motherless human being” who's called Adam in Genesis. Everything that comes to meet us in the way of a human being is unthinkable if he's not born from a mother. Adam is the only motherless human being; only father forces were active in him. Of course we mustn't place him before our soul as a sensorial, physical man, or when Yahweh created the first earth man in his etheric body present physical conditions didn't exit on our earth planet; and namely he created him out of the earth-planet's substances, as the Bible indicates. These substances or earth forces are still present in every man today, so that we can say: Yahweh is the father of us all, and the planet is our mother.

So father forces continue to work in men today; they are an earth-bound, planetary force. They work in everything that's on earth, and so also in men. For after the conception of a child, the mother's forces work on it, but so do the father forces; they go into the child from the earth via the father and form the upbuilding forces there that are most strongly active up to age 33.

Let's make it clear to ourselves: what happens at the birth of a new human being? The mother bears one part in her, but the other part is super-sensible—invisible and is connected with the father. Place yourself meditatively into this thought of a motherless human being, try to grasp it purely spiritually, and place a second picture beside it: that of the fatherless Christ.

Whereas planetary forces coming from the father are mainly active until the Mystery of Golgotha, forces of the cosmos, mother forces are added since then by Christ Jesus. We know that this most important of all earth events falls in the fourth cultural age of the post-Atlantean epoch. This was preceded by the Egyptian age in which the perfected Isis culture was cultivated in the Egyptian mysteries. Egyptians revered the nature forces that come to expression in all minerals, animals and plants in the figure of Isis. But an Egyptian soul looked at man sorrowfully and told himself that he wasn't aware of these nature forces in him, and that's why he thought that Isis was veiled. He said that no mortal was allowed to lift her veil to press towards her. What does this mean? Nothing else than that the Goddess lives in the astral world and not in the physical one, and that only someone who's gone through the portal of death can know her; no living person could lift her veil. That is, the effect of the Isis forces was denied to live people. And what were these Isis forces? They were pure mother forces that a man could only be given in the spiritual world before the Mystery of Golgotha, that is, when he had gone through the portal of death.

People in the Egyptian mysteries knew about this. Over Isis' picture were the words: I am the I am, that I was and that I will be—the same Eyeh asher eyeh that spoke to Moses out of the burning bush. An Egyptian could only get a presentiment of the Mystery of Golgotha, through which pure mother forces would also act upon living men. Pure mother forces—out of the cosmos—can only work in men on earth now because Christ Jesus, the fatherless human being, has completely connected himself with the earth after he went through the portal of death.

Let our modern scholars laugh when they look at the Egyptians' worship of animals. It can only fill us with the deepest reverence, for we know that what's concealed behind it is the veneration of these nature forces that were locked up for men. We look at the great wisdom that underlies all these mysteries with great wonder.

Let's ask ourselves how these two forces are active in men. The father force that's transmitted from the earth to a child via his father works in an upbuilding and strengthening way until age 33. Although the mother force that strives downwards is already at work in man, the father forces are stronger up to this time. If only the forces striving downward, Christ forces, would rule a man, he wouldn't incarnate on earth. Whereas if only the forces that strive up, the planetary ones, would rule him he would always live on earth; then there would be no death.

The sacred center of forces that was Isis in the Egyptian mysteries is the Maria-Sophia in John's Gospel in Christianity. It was only the union of ascending and descending forces that took place in the Mystery of Golgotha that enabled a man to also feel the activity of mother forces between birth and death. Christ Jesus couldn't get older than 33. From an occultist's standpoint, a man is only carrying his body with him like a corpse by the time he's 33. Of course, the effect of the forces and their change doesn't appear all at once, but happens gradually. The mother and father forces are both in man from the beginning, except that the upbuilding earth forces predominate. During the father forces period, the life we lead is conditioned by our preceding life. But from the time when the dying mother forces predominate, we create karma for the next life through this spiritual force. The father or upbuilding nature force works in us without our help, whereas to become aware of the effect of the mother force, we must strive and work in spiritual things ourselves. We must become aware of this sublime force, for it's the force that streams into us directly from Christ.

As so often before, we now get an inkling of the deep meaning in the Rosicrucian verse: We're born from the Gods—Ex Deo nascimur. The Adam force of the motherless man works on the physical body in an upbuilding and preserving way. Whereas what's working since the Mystery of Golgotha is the fatherless man, Christ Jesus, the dying force, the force that leads to the dying of the physical body here on earth and that awakens spiritual life if we devote ourselves to it consciously. In Christ we die, that is, die with all of our physical concepts and the lower ego that was built up for us while the Adam forces were active. And then we'll really experience the last line of the Rosicrucian verse: We're born again in the Holy Spirit.

After much exercising a man may have the feeling that he hasn't gotten further in his experience of the spiritual world. But this may be based on an error. It may be that one notices nothing during or after meditation, but then it can happen that when one goes back to one's customary duties and doesn't become entirely absorbed by outer work, one suddenly has the feeling: Something is thinking in me now.

It also often happens that a meditator goes to sleep while he's doing his retrospect, but when he reawakens and tries to follow up what happened in him in the meantime he'll often be able to find that the retrospect was continued. It's important to feel that. It doesn't contradict what was always said to the effect that we mustn't give any value to what happens without the ego. For when we recall it, we incorporate it into the ego.

One who has had such experiences can be permeated by the consciousness in special moments: It thinks—it's not me who thinks, but it thinks, and namely: It thinks me. Esoterically this is the same thing that was expressed exoterically in the words: In your thinking, world thoughts live.

At any spare moment in daily life one can permeate oneself with the thought, It thinks me, even if it's only for a few seconds: the thought that what otherwise appears to me as “I” was created by world thoughts through their thinking—that also my ego-feeling is a thought that thinks me. But this thought should never arise without being accompanied by a particular feeling. A man standing in the outer world thinks it's all right to think anything, but esoterics know that there are certain thoughts that shouldn't be thought if they're not accompanied by the appropriate feelings. The feeling that should accompany “It thinks me” is piety. We only think this thought in the right way if we connect it with this feeling. An esoteric should consider it to be his greatest sin if he can have the thought, It thinks me, without the feeling of piety.

An esoteric can get another awareness in connection with the words: In your will world beings are working. This can be transformed in him into the thought: It works me. The way that all forces stream together to work a human being, the way that a man is composted of past and future—all of this is in, It works me. Here, too, this must never be thought without being accompanied by a certain feeling, the feeling of reverence for the beings who create men.

What we've made out of ourself through our karma bumps into what higher beings have brought about in us. A man should never forget that no matter what may hit him, it's brought about by himself, just as he is the one who closes a door.

These are mighty mantras: It thinks me, It works me—and those who are the furthest ahead on the esoteric path are those who could permeate themselves the most at every moment of their lives with It thinks me, It works me, and always let these two be accompanied by the corresponding feelings.

Someone who has practiced It works me like this for years will get something like a present for it, as for instance when someone says: “It's raining,” where one feels the spiritual forces that are connected with the rain and work in rain.

Another feeling can come to someone who develops himself like this, a feeling that's connected with the third mantra: In your feeling world, forces are weaving. This is the feeling: It weaves me—and namely one feels that just as world thoughts think the thoughts of our ego, so world forces weave our higher I. Therefore, the feeling that should always be connected with this is that of thankfulness.

It's possible that meditation on the words: It thinks me, It weaves me, It works me, in succession, connected with the feelings of piety, thankfulness, and reverence, will replace all other meditations and will by themselves lead one into the spiritual world.

However, great help is given by what we receive from theosophy, when we study what is said there about the Saturn, Sun and Moon conditions, for then we can understand what the “it' is in: It thinks me. It's theosophy; that's what this it is. Theosophy is the world thoughts that thought me as an I. This also sheds light on our verse and on the feelings that we should cultivate there. We're not always able to have these feelings of piety, thankfulness or trust, and reverence that should accompany the Ex Deo nascimur, In Christo morimur, Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus—but it's only when we connect these feelings with the verse that we're using it in the right way.

AUM I acknowledge myself or I am: A. I acknowledge mankind or man is: U. I acknowledge the Godhead or God is: M. (Or I acknowledge life: M)

Feel responsible for every thought, feeling and action. Every moment that we experience in this way brings us forward a little. What would I be without other human beings? Helpless. Streets are paved by others. When I get up in the morning people have already worked for me. My karma is connected with that of other men. I may have been an accomplice to a murderer because I didn't improve him in a previous life. One man's gain is someone else's loss. Teachers taught me. People worked for me from the moment I was born. So do good for all mankind.

A member of our esoteric school, Maria Strauch-Spettini, died today. We have a special relation to her that doesn't end at death. For us death is the transition to another life. The pain that some people feel at the death of a beloved person often has an egotistical character, because the loss of the person affects them. But such feelings don't help the deceased personality upwards. On the contrary, they take away some of the feathers of the garment that must bear the soul upwards. If we send feelings of unselfish love after the personality we thereby weave feathers into the garment. So when a personality dies we should suppress feelings of pain coming from the loss. Maria Strauch took in theosophical teachings well and her soul became weightier.

This weightiness draws upward because it contains value for eternity. Whereas the weight of material things pulls downwards. We connect ourselves with the three worlds properly by saying the soul syllable (AUM) in the right way.

We perceive physical reality through the five senses. If we imagine that we're lifted out of the body without the five senses into a very dark world-space, then our souls shine. If we imagine that our feelings are leaving us, then we've also left the astral world behind and we resound in the spiritual world in a full and unhindered tone towards all sides. In the physical world we're hindered by our karma, character and circumstances. In the spiritual world we can't pretend to be something we're not, we sound as we are. The spiritual world resounds in spheres.

Each of us has a name in the spiritual world that will be disclosed to us in the course of developments; it's not our earthly name. The spiritual world becomes revealed to us through intuition.

The world illumines me.—I illumine the world.—I am.

Imagine how light approaches me from outside, is absorbed by all of my skin's pores and streams to my heart, the seat of life. My soul shines again from within through the eternal values that I have absorbed. Say “I am” as strongly as possible and with the idea that God is in me, works in me and makes me into a God again. Let this trickle through the whole body. Ancient Hebrew esoterics said the word “I am” in the right way, and only prepared and worthy people were allowed to say it. We also have to work after death in the soul world and in devachan. The more thoughts of eternity we've taken in here the more effectively we can work. The two worlds have a different content than they did before, and men increasingly participate in the shaping of these two worlds.

A in the sacred syllable signifies our lower individuality; U the master's individuality; M the force through which we want to develop ourselves up to him.