The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Every esoteric who's trying to develop himself inwardly must know about his connection with spiritual powers who live in the surrounding world and who stream in and out of him continually. When we look at a human being we first have his physical body. It's due to the working of spiritual beings that the physical body is put together the way it is. Archai work in the earth, water, air and fire elements. They stream in and out of his physical body. Likewise archangels are at work in his etheric body, and angels in the astral body. The sentient soul that developed out of the latter is worked on by the Exusiai. Dynamis work on the intellectual soul and Kyriotetes on the consciousness soul. Even high beings work on man's higher members: Seraphim on spirit self, Cherubim on life spirit and the Thrones on spirit man.

When an esoteric pupil wanted to know the essence of Christian teachings he had to look at this picture of man shaped like a tree that's rooted in the spirit. That's why they meant by Buddha sitting under the bodhi tree, or Nathaneal sitting under the fig tree. The world ash Yggdrasil is also a depiction of this tree.

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The forces that work on the physical body are Archai. There's four kinds of these beings. They're not incorporated in physical bodies, they only have a corporality down to the ether. These are the four kings who work on man in the ether. Man owes his physical body to these beings who live in the ether. If one thinks of ever finer substances from solids to fluids, gases, warmth and ethers, one is getting the wrong idea about ethers for they are quite different from physical substances.

One should look upon the four forces in ether that work on man's physical body as the four temperaments. The substances of the four beings are the four temperaments. Beings who are incorporated in the choleric temperament work in man's warmth element, those in sanguine in his air, phlegmatic in water, and ones who are incorporated in the melancholic temperament work in his solid or earthy things. The melancholic temperament enables a man to form firm concepts that remain the same, so that if he thinks horse today it will remain the same concept for him tomorrow. Whereas the phlegmatic temperament keeps concepts fluid so that he can always take in new things. When a man thinks, his thoughts are firmer parts of the uniform mass of his aura. In some people thought forms tend to stay firm; in others they're constantly changing. If a man's forms of thoughts are flexible, new thoughts can press into them and the two understand each other very well. An esoteric must cultivate this flexibility of thought forms. This is of great importance for him. That a man can do this is based on phlegma. It's a mistake to say that a man has this or that temperament because he has this or that physical body. His physical body was formed out of the temperaments by the spirits who work in him.

Many people think that they're working for the good of mankind from morn till eve, but this is questionable. A clairvoyant can see that efforts coming from materialistic thinking have the wrong effect, and it may lie in some people's karma that they should wait until they can do certain things. Then a higher being can whisper such a task in his ear, so that it's not induced by outer circumstances. Life is a destructive process for someone who only devotes himself to outer sense impressions. A meditating esoteric doesn't let his life be determined by outer circumstances as much. One who makes repeated meditational efforts isn't exposed to astral confusions at night and makes himself ready to receive the instructions of spiritual beings. And it's very necessary that we be instructed in this way. For since 1879 we've entered a new stage of human evolution. Gabriel worked on the development of a new organ in man's brain by regulating human births (1525–1879). A 16^th century man would not have understood our present theosophy. It's up to archangel Michael to stimulate men to use their newly acquired organ, that degenerates if a man doesn't use it. Such a man comes under the influence of Michael's opponent, Mammon or Beelzebub. This is the God of hindrances, who wants to prevent men from making progress. The bacteria that arise under his influence can give rise to terrible epidemics and strange nervous diseases; children could be born with a ruined nervous system. After Michael's reign comes Oriphiel who gives the divine wrath that should only be used by highly developed people. Jesus drives the merchants out of the temple.

Although one can't eat one's way into the spiritual world, eating the wrong things can make spiritual development difficult or impossible.

Alcohol only arose after the Atlantean epoch to help men to become individualized. It closes man off from his higher capacities and encloses him in himself. That's why alcohol was used in the Dionysian mysteries. But now all civilized people have reached that stage so that alcohol is an unnecessary evil today. Through its use one loses the ability to get along with others and to understand them. Alcohol is especially harmful for esoterics since its use changes all developed higher forces into forces of the personal ego, repeatedly locks it into itself, and tears the astral body apart through the opposing streams of the higher and lower I forces. The principle through which everyone can consciously attain his individualization was brought through the coming of Christ to the earth. That's why Christ Jesus says: I am the true vine.

By consuming alcohol one prepares a fertile soil for hosts of spiritual beings, just as a dirty room gets filled with flies.

The meat (but not milk and eggs) that we eat is permeated by the animal's astral body, and so our astral body has to work to digest it. This takes it away from its real task of creating pictures. Also at night it's held fast by the etheric body so that it can't leave it properly. This hinders it from its nightly task of restoring vital forces. Vegetarian food that consists of physical and etheric things support the creation of large, comprehensive pictures and so gives a greater insight that lets one oversee things better without much deliberation. The greater force doesn't exhaust us, but summons spiritual forces.

Vegetarian food is excellent for doctors and lawyers who will find it easier to see through their patients or their clients' affairs, but it's not the right thing for bankers, industrialists, salesmen and others who have a lot of calculating, for one loses the ability to make physical combinations. People who inherited a body that can't stand vegetarianism should not undertake an esoteric training.

The jogging, exercising and bathing that are often recommended are wrong for an esoteric; they pull him down into his physical body. He should try to move his limbs as little as possible.

A budding esoteric doesn't need faith, but only confidence in his teacher, as is true for any kind of instruction, and he needs his healthy human intellect. This will lead him to the conviction that masters of wisdom must exist since it would be illogical to assume that evolution stopped with us, although this in itself wouldn't tell him who or what these masters are. But his teacher knows who they are. A pupil can assume that basic truths like karma and reincarnation are true on a trial basis. Then he can find out for himself whether they're true. When something happens to him he'll tell himself that he must have caused it, and he'll act accordingly. That's why Jesus says that if someone strikes you on one cheek you should offer him the other one also, because if he hits you there too he's making bad karma good. A meditant should do six subsidiary exercises:

1. Think about a simple object for at least five minutes. Hold it fast in thoughts without going over to other things. One can prepare for this by familiarizing oneself with the object first. After a few days one can choose another object. This exercise arouses a feeling of firmness in the pupil as it activates the chakram between his eyebrows. One should send this feeling through the brain and down the backbone.

2. Do an unimportant thing every day at a certain time. This exercise also gives firmness.

3. Develop equanimity, that is, one shouldn't fluctuate between rejoicing to heaven and despairing to death. A joke can be enjoyed just as much if one doesn't laugh boisterously at; one can bear a pain better if one doesn't wallow in it too much. This gives one a feeling of quiet calm that one lets stream from the heart to the arms, and out through the hands.

4. See the beautiful and true elements in all things. Christ Jesus admired the beautiful teeth in a rotting dog, where his disciples only saw ugliness. One can discover at least a small kernel of truth and something beautiful in everything. If one does this exercise for some time it gives one a feeling of great joy.

5. Always be open to new things. One should never say: I never heard of that, that can't be, or I don't believe that. One should always leave the possibility open that one can learn something from everything that people say. Thereby one can learn from children, animals and everything else. This gives one the feeling that one could also perceive things while one is partly outside one's body.

6. This exercise is a combination of the preceding ones, so that one can combine two and two or any way one wants. By doing this, one gets the feeling that one has grown beyond the limits of one's skin.

Our esoteric feeling of responsibility must become keener; we must acquire theosophical conscientiousness. It's seldom found in the outside world. Examples: 1. A gentleman who want to write a big book and wants to incorporate something about theosophy in it asks R. Steiner to tell him what it's about since he doesn't have time to study it. 2. an American goes to lectures by R. Steiner here, summarized them—to the extent that he understands them—and prints them as his own publications in America.

We must acquire theosophical tact and only speak about the school and esoteric things in the right place, and never at meals.

Our physical body is tightly fused with the etheric body. There's two ways to loosen them: 1. In an exoteric way through physical exercise and a vegetarian diet. 2. In an esoteric way through training, meditation, etc. This works on the astral body and that works on the etheric body, so that it gets loosened. One could say that a front cord with lotus flowers is built up by meditation, concentration, etc., as a counterpart to the physical spinal cord in the rear and the brain. That's the right way which permits no injury to the physical body. Whereas if one only uses outer means of loosening of the etheric body occurs, but it hasn't been strengthened by meditation or an influx of theosophical truths. The result is diseases of the physical body or confusion, etc., when the etheric brain becomes loosened from the physical one.

An esoteric should realize what he is really doing wit the exercises that are given to us. We've often mentioned that an esoteric is trying to loosen the etheric body and in general the four bodies from each other. This can happen in an esoteric and an exoteric way.

One can prepare the physical body sufficiently through diet, breathing exercises, etc. so that it ejects or squeezes out the etheric body. Our vegetarian way of living is basically intended to support the physical body in this striving. These are exoteric ways to loosen the bodies. The esoteric ones are our exercises. And here one has to say that the latter are the main thing. In our materialistic age many a materialist would gladly follow the most extensive dietary rules, would do breathing exercises for hours if he could attain something that way. To exert oneself spiritually is much more inconvenient, and here the spiritual inertia often becomes evident.

If we would squeeze out our etheric body by merely physical means the physical body couldn't give it anything to take with it, and it would go out into the unknown empty. Then states arise where for instance we can't grasp something with our thinking when we want to think it through. Our etheric brain can't use the physical one properly. It's as if we were swimming in water and wanted to grab something that kept on eluding us. Under such conditions a sensible esoteric will tell himself that he must first create order here through suitable willed concentrations and thought exercises. Even in normal development some things will arise of which we must tell ourselves that it's a temporary suffering. For through the pulling out of the etheric body and physical body undergoes something similar to a plant that has its sap withheld from it for awhile. It dries up. And although one doesn't see it physically, part of the physical body dries up and if it has predispositions for diseases, they appear. But if the etheric body has permeated itself rightly with spiritual truths it thereby receives new forces, and they have a healing effect on the physical body. One can observe that cuts and other wounds in the physical body heal more easily if the man permeates himself with spiritual truths or if he just lets the theosophical way of thinking work on him.

So at first we work on the astral body through our meditations. This is the builder of our nervous system that runs towards the spinal cord, or as one says today—goes out from it. Through an imprint from the astral body we're now supposed to bring about the unfolding of lotus flowers in the etheric body, which are connected with each other and thereby create a cord up front, as it were.

This front cord is only present etherically-astrally and can only be formed through concentration and meditation. That's why they're the most important part of our esoteric development.

The drinking of alcohol is very harmful for an esoteric. Alcohol must definitely be avoided. It's good to support development through a vegetarian diet, for this lifting out of the etheric body is not at all easy today. Many modern vocations are expressly designed to drive the etheric body firmly into the physical body, so that it often pains a clairvoyant to see something like that. The food one gets in hotels has the same effect.

We're supposed to acquire a new thinking, feeling and willing through esoteric work on ourselves. We must tell ourselves that when we've gotten up the courage to tread the esoteric path we must make a jump over an abyss. We must let a thought that we have thought through pass over into our feelings and then permeate the latter with it completely so that we don't carelessly say something that we haven't fully grasped. A frequently heard statement that's misused more than most is: I am a Christian. An esoteric should realize that being a Christian is a distant ideal that he must constantly try to attain. To live like a Christian mainly means to accept whatever destiny may bring us with equanimity, to never grumble about the Gods' work, and to joyfully accept whatever they send. It means to let the sentence “Look at the birds of the air, they don't sow, reap or store in barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them” pass over into your flesh and blood. We're living in accordance with this saying if we thankfully accept what's given to us. If we don't do that it becomes blasphemy in our mouth. We should realize that if we don't prepare ourselves sufficiently for the leap over the abyss and into spiritual regions we can do so much damage through words and thoughts that the Gods have to destroy worlds to make the damage good again. For what is ruined must be destroyed in order to be created anew.

We arose from the spirit—Ex Deo nascimur. And when we jump over the abyss we express this through, In Christo morimur—with the firm confidence that we come to live again over there in the Holy Spirit—Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus. But because we should always keep the name of the holiest one—who was always connected with our earth—so holy that we don't say it unworthily, there's an esoteric version of the Rosicrucian verse in which the name is omitted:

Ex Deo nascimur
In … morimur
Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus.

A famous inscription, the Delphic E (Ei) stood over the portal of the Delphi's temple. The Delphic E means “you are.” Plutarch said it was a greeting to the Godhead by the people who entered the temple. The Delphic E also means the number 5, or the five rising signs in the zodiac. It was adopted by the Gnostics to indicate the Savior, and it's often found on the early Christians' talismans and amulets. It's also found on Seleucid anchors … Maha aya=the great nonexistence. I/A=existence, ch=shaping oneself, im=becoming aware of oneself. The word Iachim (Joachim) has a pedagogically healing effect. Should be said as a prayer in morn and eve for the sake of children and sick people.

To combat vanity, pride, and arrogance think about theosophical teachings; envy and jealousy—think of a beautiful work of art; talkativeness, curiosity, and aggravation—15 minutes quiet every day.

We must take esoteric life seriously, and so an esoteric class must always be something sacred for us. We should never take it to be something ordinary. Probably not all of us were aware of the seriousness that is necessary when we asked to be admitted to this esoteric circle. But now we should place this ever more before our souls and strive for a connection with the spiritual worlds so that we don't fall back into everyday life again.

One should always look upon the exercises that are given to us as ones that come from the masters. An esoteric should watch himself and his feelings and to especially focus on self-knowledge. Most people—and we are probably among them—are living in big delusions about themselves. We must especially pay attention to egoism. We often imagine that we're doing something selflessly, or we feel hatred and envy towards someone that we haven't become aware of yet. Then as esoterics we think that we must tell him the “truth,” and that we don't have to take this or that from him. As soon as such feelings arise in us, one should realize that one is living under big delusions whose deeper cause is always egoism. Such feelings always become manifest together with a feeling of warmth that goes through the etheric body's warmth ether and works right into the physical body through the blood. Such feelings always have a harmful effect on men and world evolution.

The hierarchies who direct karmic connections work in such a way that they appoint special beings who destroy certain upbuilding effects in us, and therewith have a destructive effect on the soul and indirectly on the body. These are Luciferic beings who are appointed for this kind of work.

When we have correct self-knowledge and see our own badness, an ice-cold feeling goes through us instead of the aforementioned feeling of warmth that satisfies us. All the passions and desires that get satisfied in us express themselves in the described feeling of warmth, in contrast to the feeling of coldness that appears in true self-knowledge.

The Luciferic beings that thereby approach a pupil destructively reveal themselves to a clairvoyant as certain hosts, whose leader is Samael. These beings who don't look human at all are always perceptible for a spiritual eye. If on awakening, we have a feeling of disgust, as is often the case in an esoteric pupil, then such a feeling can almost always be ascribed to the egoism that often sits unrecognized deep in subconscious soul depths.

We must also direct our attention to everything that's connected with untruthfulness. Thanks to our education, we don't tell any big lies, but we always have the inclination to seem to be better than we really are. Or if the truth could endanger us, we prefer to keep quiet about it and to conceal the facts. This kind of thing also has a harmful effect on world events and therewith on the men themselves. Such untruths work on our astral body and then on our light ether. From there such harmful influences work on the physical body, especially on the nervous system. The Luciferic beings who are connected with this and whose leader is Azazel look partly like men, mostly a head with raven's wings.

One who tends to be untruthful will usually be able to feel a choking, scratchy sensation in the throat, and he often feels as if he was being pinched with pincers and tormented with a thousand arms. One who observes himself exactly will then notice how deeply he's still entangled in lies and dissimulations.

Then we should also become aware of a certain indifference and dullness with respect to spiritual worlds and their influences. Many pupils listen to an esoteric lecture, but what's given finds no echo in them. They can't lift themselves spiritually above everyday life or occupy themselves with spiritual thoughts. Others only want to see something in spiritual worlds out of curiosity, and meditate blind—to this end, without wanting to devote themselves to regular study, for that's too inconvenient for them. This has a harmful effect on the ego, from there on the astral body, then on the etheric body and namely on the part we call chemical ether, and from there on the physical glands and fluids.

There's a difference between esoterics and nonesoterics in their relation to Lucifer's hosts. For instance, Azazel and his hosts want to produce good effects on the latter, since they only work on them in a complementary way, as it were, and not to make them sick. But esoteric pupils are expected to be fully aware of their responsibility towards the world and themselves. That's why a dull esoteric can easily have the feeling on waking in the morn that he's drowning, especially if he abandons himself to ordinary sense life. And so an esoteric must constantly watch himself, and it doesn't hurt if he sometimes becomes a brooder about himself. Then he'll understand what the masters of wisdom bring home to him at the close of each class:

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.

World evolution and human evolution always go hand in hand, and one who goes to an esoteric school must take his age into account. But since one is connecting oneself with evolution's eternal values through an esoteric training something went through an Egyptian mystery school, for instance, that's of lasting importance for a pupil, namely words that can work on a modern just as well s they did back then. Such words from the past are the following: I arrived at the portal of death; I got to know the four elements; I saw the sun at midnight; I got close to the upper and lower Gods. I returned to the outer world.

What does “I arrived at the portal of death” mean? In our meditations we'll gradually start to feel like a double personality, where we no longer feel that our I belongs to what we previously identified with our ego—the physical body. When a man dies, it's only natural that he no longer looks upon his physical body as something that belongs to him. But he must already attain this through his training. If a man had developed in the way that the good Gods wanted, he would have directed his body from outside. For instance, if a man had wanted to travel from one city to another, he would have directed his body there from outside through a magical will impulse. His body would have been like a weight that belonged to him. We can make this clear to ourselves if we suppose that a Mars dweller was suddenly placed on earth, and the first man whom he met was carrying a weight in each hand. Since the Mars dweller had never seen a man before, he might think that the two weights were grown together with the body. Likewise, we think that we are grown together with our body too much. But if we train ourselves properly, we'll increasingly get the feeling that our ego is splitting and that one part of it is directing the other from outside. As we come in contact with sublime, creative beings with our I that's lifted out—which we should humbly feel to be grace—it may happen that we increasingly identify this I with the sublime beings. For we have no idea of how permeated we are by pride and vanity. However, there's a good way to counteract this vanity.

When men's predecessors on earth, the Elohim, appeared, how did they do this? They didn't vainly bask in their glory. The Bible tells us that they created and that they then looked at their deeds and saw that they were good. So we should look at the deeds of our ego, at what the ego has achieved; then we'll see how bad everything still is. Let's take our handwriting. This is an expression of our ego, a part of us that we place outside. Now man would be so vain as to think that his handwriting was very beautiful. And if a man looks at many of his achievements more closely, he will find them rather deficient.

Now what does “I got to know the four elements” mean? The first element in which man was created was warmth. And in earth evolution it was really intended that a man was supposed to send streams of warmth into his body from outside. The heat of summer and winter's cold that he now experiences in his body as a single man he was, as it were, supposed to feel as his ego streaming towards him from outside. He was supposed to feel that this ego was connected with all other egos The fact that warmth has moved into our blood is Lucifer's deed. Air is the second element with which we're closely connected. We should really have the feeling that we are the air that's outside there, that we stream into the body with every breath to re-enliven it. Instead of this, we feel that air is something that comes to us from outside, and we give it back as something that kills. Ahriman comes towards us in this lethal air.

We only identify ourselves with the solid and fluid elements in us—the physical body and its blood. But we should identify ourselves so little with our respective personality that even if we get to know our previous incarnations, we only look upon these as through stations. We should never say that we were this or that personality. For thereby, we combine our eternal I with something perishable.

(Rudolf Steiner's version of the Egyptian verse above:

I went up to the boundary of death
I crossed Proserpina's threshold.

And after I had gone through all the elements
I came back again.

At midnight I saw the sun
Radiating with bright, white light.

I stepped before the lower and upper Gods, face to face
And prayed to them from close up.

When one comes into an esoteric stream, it's quite natural to ask oneself: How do I bring my soul forward, how do I develop it upwards? Here it's of the greatest importance for us to stand firmly at an esoteric center from which we look at life and let it be irradiated from there. We should open ourselves to the streams from the spiritual world that are in accordance with our time. It has absolutely no value to flirt with other lines of thought because they seem to be theosophical—to work with them superficially. This directly hinders our progress. It would be much better to join a mostly wrong line of thought if we think that it gives us more, for then we'll get the corresponding things from it. A true esoteric must look at life with alert eyes from his firm, immoveable standpoint, for life will become increasingly complicated. These complications are created by Luciferic beings who remained behind in their development at the Mystery of Golgotha, that is, they didn't accept the consequences of this Mystery. What's happening now in spiritual worlds is shocking in many respects for one who can see into them. Lucifer brought it about that we moved into our physical and etheric bodies and didn't remain floating above them, and this was actually good for us, for this enabled our ego to attain cognitional power and memory. To be sure, memory is also something that holds us back. But in the way we're in our bodies we would not be able to do without it—mainly we wouldn't be able to distinguish between reality and illusion. For instance, if we would think of a man we knew 20 years ago and would confront this memory picture and greet it, we would have to call that a hallucination. But we would succumb to this hallucination if we would look upon a thing that remained behind as something that was appropriate for our time, and that's something that will often be the case in the near future. The Luciferic beings who remained behind at the Mystery of Golgotha have created a kind of a vanguard for themselves out of people they overpowered after their last death. These are souls who lived at the time of Tauler and Eckhart in the 13^th century and who belonged to the Beghard community. They'll try to confuse souls soon by means of Brahmanism and Buddhism, those old religions. They were the right thing for their age when they were given to the ancient Indians, and especially Brahmanism was a much more spiritual religion than Christianity is now. But that's because Europeans since medieval times passed by opportunities for rightly developing what came to them. Then, too, a tidal wave of spiritual culture from Culture will greatly impress Europeans, for since it goes back to Atlantis, it's superior to present Christianity. What just happened in China may be of external political importance, but an esoteric must regard Kun Hung Ming's book, China's Defense Against European Ideas, as something that has much greater spiritual significance. Ku Hung Ming is a bright man. What he says isn't wrong, and there's a lot in there that should give an esoteric food for thought. He says that Christian missionaries came to China to bring their Christianity into an ancient, high culture. Did they succeed? No. Something else happened instead. The missionaries brought Chinese culture back to Europe, and since the French Revolution Europe has been Chinafied much more than it realizes. This Chinaman knows exactly that his people watches over mankind's memory and that this fact makes a deep impression on Europeans. But as we said, memory is Lucifer's gift. Through him, we descended into our physical body on being driven out of the paradise of spiritual worlds. We must now revoke Lucifer's deed, but we shouldn't think that it wasn't necessary.

But now we should increasingly look upon this as an instrument only. Of course if we manage to leave it through meditation and concentration and see it lying before us, its organs aren't active. The eyes don't see and the ears don't hear. The body has the value of a plant, but of a highly developed one. We must get rid of the habit of speaking of the lower physical and etheric bodies, for they have a marvelous structure. The physical body is a temple that the lower Gods made for us, and anything bad or defective about it can only be ascribed to our own deeds. And when we dwellers in this temple look at ourselves, we become aware that our spiritual part has the shape of a dragon or worm. A clairvoyant sees many a man who thinks that he's living selflessly for his fellow men with protruding jaws and the receding forehead of a worm as a sign of his egoism. Our soul still has this worm shape, and so that we don't always see it the good Gods have placed the Guardian of the Threshold before it. But now we should set ourselves the task of bringing a transformed dragon up to the upper Gods. We should be working on this continually. When an ancient Egyptian walked between the rows of sphinxes in the temple at his initiation, he told himself that this temple was a physical copy of the perfect home of a God, and that he had to attain this divinity in order to live worthily in the temple of his body.

So when one leaves the body one's eyes can no longer see. They no longer see the physical sun or what it illumines. Instead, a man illumines his environment himself and perceives the spiritual world's colors and sounds. The capacities of his spiritual part increase. Of course if one overdoes the leaving, one's physical eyes can suffer from it. They then see everything surrounded by an aura, and not clearly. They now have instruments in England with which they can see auras, but this is harmful for eyes and a healthy leaving of the body has no need of such practices.

An ancient Atlantean couldn't see things clearly either. He didn't have to, because the sun was still veiled by dense fog banks, and near the end of Atlantis one could see it over the whole heavens like a huge, colored circle with a pale, veiled center.

In ancient Egyptian initiations physical means were used to enable pupils to see the sun through the earth. To see the spiritual sun today, one is supposed to do spiritual exercises only.

Now let's raise our thoughts again to the high being who's in charge of today. It's always a favorable constellation if an esoteric lesson can be held on a Friday, because of the great influence that this being ours into our thoughts and feelings. (Venus mantra.)

Last time we discussed why we should become esoterics; today I'd like to tell you the real significance of daily mediation. The meditations are tested and given to us by the masters of wisdom and of the harmony of feelings for esoteric work. Their force is irresistible if they're done in the right way with the most sacred devotion. One should do the meditation shortly before going to sleep and after one has banished all thoughts from our soul that still connect us with daily life with it joys and pleasure, work and sorrows. The meditation must be our last thought that we take into the other world so that spiritual beings can connect themselves with it. We dive down into their etheric bodies and they permeate us with their force so that we can receive new forces and fresh health from them for the new day. Unfortunately, many men go over into sleep life with thoughts of material life's everyday pleasures. These thoughts that stream out create oscillations that repel spiritual beings, and such men counteract their spiritual development and health. Just as we dive down into a spiritual atmosphere in the evening, so on awakening in the morn we shouldn't immediately get caught up in the worries, desires and passions that filled us the previous day. If we suppress all of this and let our thoughts still stay in the regions from which we just descended for awhile, then after a little practice, we'll feel how this promotes our development and not just for our own inner being, for the radiant forces that flowed into us will also go out of our eyes and hands and into our deeds for the good of mankind.