The Rudolf Steiner Archive

A soul who sees the things that our outer movement is going through and that tend to make one criticize can ask: How is this criticism compatible with the development of the positivity that we're supposed to develop as a basic exercise?

In earlier times they didn't have as many pupils cultivating the esoteric life as we do now. Various forces are combating our kind of esoteric life. Pupils must take esoteric life seriously and worthily. We should realize how tremendously important the step from the exoteric life into the esoteric one is. An esoteric must gradually see exoteric life in an entirely different light.

For example, we can all remember that we played as kids and that we took this play seriously. Let's ask ourselves: If we adults wanted to play with kids how would we do it? Of course we could play with kids and maybe even better than they, because we can use our intellect for this. But we would have to put ourselves in a different soul state to really be in the playing activity.

An esoteric has a relation to outer life that's quite similar to the one that an adult has to the play of children. When he returns to outer exoteric life from esoteric exercises he'll gradually look upon the former as if he wanted to play with children as an adult. And just as an adult must put himself in another soul state, so an esoteric feels that he's put into another soul state when he goes over to exoteric life. An esoteric won't be less capable in everyday life, but will stand in it in a more capable and vigorous way than he did before he got into esotericism. Thus the transition from exoteric to esoteric life is a unique incision into human life, and esoteric life can't be taken seriously and worthily enough.

Let's take a closer look at esoteric life. We know that various changes take place in our soul life through the exercises we received. For instance, the passions that a man had before get stronger. Old inclinations, drives and passions one thought one had overcome and put aside reemerge from the dark shafts of soul life and assert themselves vehemently. Or an esoteric often thoughtlessly does something which he would have been ashamed of before the start of his esoteric training or wouldn't have done at all. His antipathies and sympathies for people become stronger than before; his whole soul life becomes stirred up. In short, a man gets to know what he's really like in his soul depths so that he has real self-knowledge. Therefore strict and strong self-control is indispensable for an esoteric pupil.

If the exercises are continued energetically and patiently the changes in an esoteric's soul life can be about as follows. At first he may be that nothing special results from the exercises in concentration and meditation. But one should realize that the first experiences can be so fine and subtle that they can only be noticed by the use of a certain attentiveness. For instance, it could be that an esoteric in the midst of his everyday life suddenly has a thought that seems to spring out of his other thought life, that obviously doesn't belong to this everyday life—a thought that's about his own being. Such a thought flits by unnoticed if there isn't enough attentiveness there. The important and necessary thing is to become attentive enough to notice thoughts that seem to fall out of one's ordinary thought life, and that we become aware that possibly grotesque thoughts rise in our soul without our ordinary waking ego-consciousness being involved. Thereby we become aware that something lives behind our ordinary ego that we hadn't known previously, that something is active behind this ego which weaves thoughts. If we direct more and more attentiveness towards these thoughts that fall out of everyday life, they'll appear with increasing frequency, and eventually we'll be able to experience them at will. Then a pupil sees as through a door that this weaving on what one what one is used to calling the thought body, is going on continuously. Every pupil will someday experience this is he works on patiently and energetically. But he won't arrive at such experiences if he stops doing exercises. Hindrances of the outer and inner life may induce a pupil to stop doing his exercises. Difficulties that oppose esoteric life can arise outwardly, and resistance to it can also arise from weakness and laziness. If a pupil succumbs to these and doesn't continue on the path, the fruit of his previous esoteric striving remain for him, but he can't get any further. Such weakness can't develop if esoteric life is cultivated rightly, for firmness and perseverance are enveloped therein which prevent one from giving up on one's original resolve.

So if a pupil does the exercises that were given him energetically and patiently and then creates the quiet in which his consciousness is quite empty, this will eventually lead to experiences from the spiritual world. The attitude of soul with which a pupil receives revelations is also quite important. He should be thankful to the divine, spiritual hierarchies for every thought and experience form the super-sensible realm. He should develop such thankful feelings ever more intensely; an honest cultivation of them may give him more revelations and it brings him forward. A pupil must put himself into a prayerful mood that prepares him to receive revelations rightly. If an experience presents itself from the spiritual world he should realize that something was given through grace.

In the last ten years the masters' grace has brought a great many spiritual truths into exoteric and esoteric theosophical life. An enormous spiritual treasure has been entrusted to us during this time, so that for instance, it may be hard for some souls to assimilate everything that's been said about the four Gospels. Some souls even have a negative attitude to this treasure, and they express their dislike for it. Such an attitude is understandable, for one has to admit that it's hard to master the given teachings. But after all, it's our task to work our way through to an ever more comprehensive understanding of Christ and to penetrate ever deeper into the Mystery of Golgotha. All statement of Krishna or Elijah and all wisdom of past times flowed into this. Therefore we shouldn't slacken but should pull ourselves together, work willingly, learn and learn again. We must master page after page of a lecture cycle and we should never let up.

However, the earth is a battlefield for Luciferic and Ahrimanic powers who can take over human beings. What do these powers tell each other? They say: There are lazy souls who don't want to go along with what flowed down from spiritual worlds. We can work on them and capture them.

And so these beings take possession of such souls and draw them away from the path by leading them into illusions and errors and making them into agents for their adversarial work. Whereas, if we work hard and steadily, our path is the straight line from Krishna—if we don't want to go further back—to Buddha, Elijah, John and Christ. If we strive seriously and apply thought power, effort and time to understand everything that was and is being said about Christ and the Mystery of Golgotha, we'll be equal to the attacks of the adversarial forces that are trying to stop esoterics' development. But all those who slacken and don't want to keep up succumb to the attacks of the adversarial powers. They're the ones who become opponents of our movement and who create the increasing number of hindrances that we've noted over the years.

Another thing that esoterics should especially cultivate is a feeling for truth. Nothing should ever hinder us from saying the truth freely and openly. Every attempt to deviate from the truth must be paid for at some point … But there's one thing we can do, and this shall be the answer to the question we asked at the beginning: Even if we must condemn a man's deeds, we shouldn't criticize the man himself, but love him. Whether or not we really love him will become evident in the moments of our meditation. Take none of the sympathies and antipathies and the little worries and so on into the spiritual worlds—this will open them for us and let us get into them in the right way.

The example of playing children showed us how an esoteric pupil is related to exoteric life, and that he can play better than kids because he connects himself with the latter, rather than with the toys. The important thing is his soul attitude and his connection with the children, and not the toys. That's the way things are on the esoteric path also. There, the pupil gets into a different relation to his surroundings. He looks at the latter differently than before. In a way, he's outgrown them and yet he understands them better. We shouldn't lose interest in things in the outer world, although an esoteric training tends to make one lose interest in what formerly interested one.

A man out in life likes some men more than others. He, of course, tends to either ignore the defects of someone he likes or to excuse them much more easily than in someone he doesn't like. This attitude must be changed in an esoteric. His relation to his fellow men must become more impersonal. This shouldn't happen overnight; that wouldn't even be right, for karmic connections could be torn thereby. But he must gradually get to the point where he also wants to help people he doesn't like. This makes him see others' defects—also those of loved ones—more clearly than before, but that doesn't do any harm; it gets evened out again through esoteric training.

Our soul mood really becomes different. Taking another look at what happens to us in the moments when we end our meditations it's not indifferent whether this playing in of the spiritual world happens right after the meditation or only later on in daily life, and also whether this is the result of meditation or whether it's only atavistic clairvoyance, clairaudience or a reflection of visions.

It's best for our soul life if these transitions only play in fleetingly and are easily forgotten. The main thing for an esoteric is to learn to pay attention to this brief lighting up of the spiritual world. Through esoteric training our thinking becomes finer, more spiritual and more independent of the brain. Look at how important the concepts of time and space are for human feelings. And yet time and space are maya in the spiritual world. An esoteric pupil in the midst of exoteric life may suddenly get the feeling that it's not he who's thinking at this moment but that he's perceiving his thought body and the thoughts that are weaving and working in it. He'll have the intense feeling: Something is thinking in me. This weaving and working of thoughts is always present in our subconsciousness, but we only become aware of it at special moments. The feeling that something spiritual wants to think, feel and will in us must increasingly awaken. Someone could ask: Isn't that a contradiction when we're told to receive everything with full consciousness, and now we hear that the I and thoughts work in our subconsciousness? Such questions arise from today's brutal logical thinking—not only brutal with respect to men, but also brutal with respect to thinking. However an esoteric must learn to think subtly and he must be aware that everything becomes transformed in esoteric life.

In sensory life a man is aware of his three soul forces—thinking, feeling and willing—through which the soul works; sentient, intellectual, and consciousness souls. These three soul members seem to mingle when one goes into higher worlds, and yet they're separate. This seems contradictory. But one should know that the three soul members are never completely separate, although each seems to exist by itself.

All of a man's desires, passions and drives surge in his sentient soul. But a man had to have something as a counterpole for his egoity. The powers who led human evolution saw this, and so they placed fear in man's sentient soul. A man had to have fear, otherwise he would have grabbed everything in sight and his egoity would have become too strong. Ancient pedagogues were well aware of this, and the telling of fairy tales and ghost stories were part of the education. Children aren't told ghost stories in school today, but this is necessary for a child's soul to a certain extent so that amazement is aroused in it, because reverence for something unknown develops from this. A child who was never told about something unknown and great can never feel devotion in later life. An esoteric must consciously transform fear into reverence, piety, devotion and an ability to sacrifice. When one goes into spiritual worlds, fear must be transformed into reverence; that's why it's good to cultivate it on the physical plane. But if the feeling of fear in man is exaggerated and the ego isn't strong enough to keep the fear from taking hold of not only the soul but also of the physical body, violent rages can arise, among other things. This can always be ascribed to a weak ego. People who have these are afraid of water and other things that don't hang together. This is a wrong working in of spiritual forces upon the soul and body.

The basic condition for the intellectual soul is cleverness, which is often crossed through by sympathy. It is odd that these poles confront each other in the intellectual soul. The intellect is often crossed through and influenced by sympathy. A placing of oneself into other beings, a feeling of sorrow and joy as if it were our own, is something that should be attained through conscious meditations. We must arrive at the feeling that we're all a unity, and we must learn to feel that time and space become something separate. For instance, a mother will have different attitudes towards her child's pains at the ages of one, three, and twenty. She also feels differently about her own child than about someone else's. A mother feels differently because she's connected with her child, is a unity with him or her, just as we're a piece of the unity of spiritual worlds. One also sees that maya changes through time and space and that thereby one's soul sympathy changes.

We'll find that with such sympathy we often feel a tremendous bliss. But we shouldn't give in to this mood. This should just be the main feeling when we become free of the body, that is, that we don't feel in the physical body but in meditation; and then enjoy the tremendous bliss of working creatively in the world.

This blissful feeling creates the greatest egoity, and that's why it's only beneficial through meditation. In physical existence we should bear everything that destiny places on us with equanimity, and we should learn to feel as if all of this didn't concern us at all, and take it as calmly as if our body was foreign to us. We must always awaken the feeling in us that we can be just as glad about the progress of others as about our own, and that it's not as if we were specially chosen to make progress. It's immaterial for world evolution who make the progress, but for us the combating and transformation of egoism is the important thing.

The one pole of the consciousness soul is the feeling of being able to exclude oneself, and the other pole that projects in from the spiritual world is conscience. This keeps us from doing things that disagree with moral laws. We must let ourselves be guided by our conscience, and not act according to the principle of the statesman of whom one says that although he seemed to let himself be led by his horses, he nevertheless directed these horses where he wanted them to go.

We must see to it that we develop conscience in the right way on the physical plane; it's only what one has acquired that one can take into spiritual worlds. Conscience changes through our meditations. The hardest stage for an occultist is the one where he's bereft of conscience. A man must have advanced a great deal here, must have cleared ambition and vanity out of his soul—those worst of all soul forces that can always drag him down again; he must have transformed them completely.

Being “without conscience” is a feeling of being completely free of one's body in the sense of higher self-knowledge, in order only then to be able to feel like a center for the reception of truths from the spiritual world. We must learn to lead a double life, to have the feeling that we're carrying our physical body around like a piece of wood. An esoteric must learn to feel that his whole body is an organ for thinking, feeling and willing.

He must get to the point where he is not only thinking with his brain that's encased in a hard skull, but with all parts of his body; for instance, hands are better organs for thinking than the brain. He must gradually spiritualize the physical to such an extent that everything becomes a mere instrument for him. He must get to the point where he looks at his etheric or physical hands without seeing them, just as he now sees neither his eyes nor his brain. Just as we feel that an ax that we take in our hand is something external, so the hand must also be felt as something that does not belong to us. We must be the driving factor that directs the hand as an instrument with which we work.

We must develop everything in us beyond the corporeal and spiritualize ourselves so much that we become like our archetype.

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.

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.

One who begins an esoteric training will, of course, try to get into higher worlds, but most people anticipate something different from what often happens there. Many think that the visionary life that must also begin is the most desirable thing, but an experience of this isn't the main thing; the important thing is a certain soul attitude. As soon as an esoteric training has begun, the soul changes under the influence of exercise that are given to an esoteric in accordance with his individuality. And then the main thing is to pay attention to such a soul attitude in the finest and subtlest way.

After the meditation, a meditator must let complete quiet enter his soul. At first the meditation still plays into his soul like a tone that slowly subsides. Then this too must disappear from the soul. The latter must become entirely empty for the reception of spiritual worlds. Practice this with patience and perseverance. One must remain quiet even if one experiences nothing for a long time. One must be glad that one succeeds in being quiet.

Without knowing it at first, one can experience something in such moments that are the most productive for development One can have the feeling: I just experienced something. It can appear as a mere dream, but experiences can also approach an esoteric in another way. On getting up in the morn and beginning our daily tasks it may happen that we suddenly have the feeling: I experienced something now. We should pay greater attention to these moments, for after awhile, another feeling will be added; we feel: You didn't think this thought yourself. It seemed to flit by and it was forgotten right away again, but it was there, we experienced it. Such an experience is very important. We should direct our attention to it ever more. For at this moment, our ordinary ego didn't think—what thought was the divine thinking that passes through all ages and eternities. It thinks me—the great world thinking, thinks me. This is expressed exoterically as: Within your thinking, cosmic thoughts hold sway. Esoterically one says: It thinks me. So when you let this mantric verse pass through your soul often, it has a very strengthening effect on it; this can happen right after meditation or at any spare moment while you're walking or standing One must fill the soul completely with thee words and feel the greatest piety. An esoteric should make it his business never to say, “It thinks me” as a mere sentence. There's another sentence we can use in the same way. Here we first have to look back at ourself. Most people don't understand why blows of destiny hit them. An esoteric should always keep the karma idea in mind. It's really so that we are to blame for everything that hit us. If we let this thought live in us, we gradually get to the point where we grasp karma, that we become aware of the connections that exist between the divine spiritual world and us, and of how our destiny, our karma is wrought out of these sub-depths. For this we have the second mantric sentence that should live in our soul in the same way as the first one: It works me; exoterically expressed: World beings work in your will. As we let the words of this second sentence pass through our soul, we should feel the holiest awe and reverence, the deepest devotion. There's also a third sentence. If we let this work on us, we can gradually get to the point where we feel the weaving of the divine hierarchies of higher worlds on our soul body. It weaves me. That's the content of the third mantric sentence, which we should let work upon our soul in the same way as the first two. With this sentence, we should feel the greatest thankfulness towards great, sublime spiritual powers. The exoteric expression of this sentence is: World forces weave in your feeling.

For instance, in the exercise: I rest in the Godhead of the world , we should feel the divine I and not the personal one. Of course, we can't exclude the word “I,” but it's the higher, expanded I that should be felt here. The personal ego with which we live in the physical body must cease at death and pass over into the higher I. It dies into the world ego: I C M.

Another feeling we must have is one of powerlessness with respect to divine, spiritual worlds. We can't preserve our physical body overnight during sleep, can't keep it from deteriorating. Divine, spiritual beings do this for us. On awakening, we come back into the physical body from the spiritual worlds from which we arose; spiritual forces maintain and form us: E D N. To experience E D N in the right way, we must fill ourselves with the thought that everything that we are in thinking, feeling and willing is given to us by the Godhead: it thinks us, it weaves us, it works us—we are born from it: Ex Deo nascimur.

We have darkened this divine soul nature in us during our life through the incarnations. We've surrounded ourselves with a world of visions that come from our being and not from primal, divine beings. Through esoteric life we must press through to the point where when we get into the spiritual world through death's portal, we've freed ourselves of this darkening that has enveloped our whole being like a visionary cloud.

If we've been successful in this, then after death we'll become united with the spirituality, the Christ, that flows through our cosmos. We die into the Christ, I C M—and thereby we're enabled to suck up pure cosmic forces to build up a purer corporeality for the next incarnation.

Our body is given to us from nature's forces; we suck these Father forces into our being; we come to the Father through the Christ: “I and the Father are One. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

We're helped to go on this path through the connection with the spiritual worlds that we can already find in physical life through esoteric life and thereby take the spiritual stream that flows towards us out of spiritual worlds into our intellect and our morality—and that is the Holy Spirit. P S S R.

It thinks me: the descent of the spiritual archetype from the Father forces behind the Zodiac.

It works me: die into Christ's etheric body that embraces the zodiac and in

It weaves me: receive the new thing that's given to us by Christ from the Father forces.

The battle against occult endeavors is greater today than ever before. It's true that people always fought against them with blood and fire, but never as much as today. You brothers and sisters can help to mitigate this battle that's only brought about by envy You can do a lot by not referring to me as a leader, as so often happens. You can be certain in your hearts and know where you stand, but you shouldn't speak about this publicly.

One can observe a certain periodicity in human life, just as one perceives a periodicity in the outer world. Say that we have an event in our life. This event passes. Things go on for a while, and then there's a repetition of the event. On the schema one sees that the circles get bigger each time. In ordinary human life one can observe that one tries to discard ambition and vanity, also love of ease and laziness. One may have won a certain victory over these defects in ordinary life. When one has gone through an esoteric development for awhile, these defects suddenly stand before us again, and as one can see from the schema, they're much worse than the first time. Now one can try to overcome this vanity, ambition, etc., again, until they approach us again in ever worse forms. But one can also stand still, not overcome, and then one will bring this vanity, etc., into one's esoteric life as poison. The following threefold force will be a good way to overcome these defects.

When our ego and astral body slip into our etheric and physical bodies again in the morning, consciousness arises through the shock of this slipping-in process. There would be no consciousness in this world without the etheric and physical bodies. These two parts that we need for consciousness don't belong to us—we inherited them from our ancestors. It might occur to us on waking that these parts that we got for nothing could also be taken way from us someday then we can understand what sages always said in the morn: “I thank you God that you enabled me to wake up again,” and so on. It's the Father God who enables us to dive down into the physical body again in the morn. When we say the words: It weaves me, we have force that enables us to feel thankfulness for this submersion in the physical body. We have a very powerful mantra in these words. A great feeling of thankfulness must go through us with these words: It weaves me. We have a great source of strength every time we say them. One who can't generate a great feeling of thankfulness shouldn't say them. Our first thought on awakening in the morn will be a prayer of thanks to the Father God who enables us to return to this physical body.

When a man has a life behind him, something will meet him in the spiritual world. What met him in BC times was different from what meets him now. A shock is experienced when one slips into the physical body, which awakens consciousness. After death, we have no physical body, and without this, an I has no consciousness today. What preserves consciousness for the I is the power of the Son, whom we can meet in the spiritual world after death. Here, too, we have a powerful mantra And that is: It works me. We should say it with devotion and reverence and thereby get a preservation of consciousness between death and a new life.

What must also come about is that we go over into spiritual worlds, that we wake up through the Holy spirit, who leads us over there. Here we have the mantra: It thinks me. This must be said with piety. And so we have hope, love and faith. Then threefold love will awaken in man—love of truth, life and creativity. We often run into love of truth, but love of life not so often. Love of life will put every man in the right position to other men. For how can one love life rightly without loving other men? Giving in to someone in everything out of passion isn't a love of life. It's only love of life if one does not excuse all wrongs out of kindness; sometimes it's love if one doesn't give in. The third love, of creativity, is hard to find. We should love all creativity and work. But look at how men turn against anything creative.

Vanity hinders us in the love of truth. And who can still be vain if he cultivates the love of truth. We must increasingly cultivate the love of truth.

Through the love of life we develop sympathy for all life. Egoism is melted by this love. One who has the right love of all life can't remain in egoism.

The love of creativity eliminates all laziness and love of ease.

And so we can say: I love the truth through the Holy Spirit who thinks in me. I love life through the Son who works in me. I love creativity through the Father who weaves in me. Or we can say: We're born in the Father God. We die in Christ, and we'll be resurrected through the Holy Spirit. E D N, I C M, P S S R. We were born in this physical body through the Father Sprit, we die through the Son, and the Holy Spirit gives us the certainty of a resurrection.

And so we'll say the words that were us out of the truth:

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.

Before we begin our actual esoteric study we should say that we in our esoteric stream must separate ourselves completely from the other one that goes through the world and that's promoted by Ms. Besant. For reasons of truthfulness we can separate ourselves from the deeds of a personality, but we must not change our love for the personality and should direct even more sympathy towards her, precisely because we must reject her deeds. As Ms. Besant wrote in 1906: “Judge has fallen on this perilous path of occultism, Leadbeater has fallen on it, very likely I too shall fall ... If the day of my fall should come I ask those who love me not to shrink from condemning my fault, not to attenuate it, or say that black is white; but rather let them lighten my heavy karma as I am trying to lighten that of my friend and brother ...” For occultism is indeed a perilous path, and everyone should consider that forces can slumber in the depths of the human soul that may not appear in ordinary life, but that come to light if one treads the perilous path. That's why one should constantly watch one's own soul and remember the words: “Watch and pray.”

Anyone who wants to enter spiritual worlds must practice strict self-knowledge. The Essene order, whose teachers also taught the Jesus of the Luke Gospel, had two rules that can show us how far away moderns are from spiritual things. One rule said that no Essene should speak about worldly things before the sun rose or after it set. And for those who had gone up to higher grades this rule was reinforced by one that forbade one to even think profane things at the indicated times. Another rule said that before the sun comes up every Essene should ask that this might happen and that the sun's power might shine over mankind every day ... These rules show us how important the connection of our being is with the events in the spiritual world from which we emerge in the morn, and in which we submerge when we go to sleep in the eve.

How little moderns live in accordance with these laws of outer and inner cycles is no doubt shown by an outer cycle like the transition of New Year's Eve into the new year. Everything that people do there and undertake before going to sleep seems to be designed to connect oneself particularly deeply with material things, whereas people should be doing a retrospect at this moment. Corresponding to this outer cycle is an inner one in man: that of waking and sleeping. In the eve a man draws his astral body and ego out of the physical and etheric bodies and lives in a purely spiritual world. Let's take a look at the moment of going to sleep, until unconsciousness gradually sets in. An ordinary man has no consciousness in the spiritual world at night. It may happen that clairvoyant moments occur and he then sees pictures of what he's left lying behind. What he sees will depend on his temperament and character. A man who feels that his stay in his bodies is like living in a house will see the physical and etheric bodies as a house with a portal through which he has to go when he wakes up. A melancholic who experiences the perishable side of earthly existence will see the image of a coffin in which a dead man lies. One who has a strong feeling that Gods built the house of his body during the old Saturn and Sun periods may see an angel or light form that hands him a chalice, representing an ancient, primal word of mankind: We're born from God.

What the Essenes did in the morn before sunrise can't be done any more today, so when a modern esoteric comes back into his physical and etheric bodies he should permeate himself with the holy feeling that sublime Gods prepared and built up these bodies during Saturn and Sun evolution so that we can develop consciousness in them. With this consciousness an esoteric will ask the God—the spiritual sun that the physical sun represents—to maintain and leave him this physical and etheric body each morn when he steps out of the spiritual world, to develop consciousness in the physical world. For where would we be if someone would take away this physical and etheric body overnight? We would then be overpowered by a feeling of unconsciousness. If we permeate ourselves with the fact that the Gods have built us this physical and etheric body we'll then have the experience that our brain, or any other organ, is not just bound to our physical body, but that it expands to a hollow sphere in which stars are imbedded that run in their orbits, and that these stars that are travelling in orbit are our thoughts. Thereby the microcosm becomes the macrocosm. The mighty forces of the whole cosmos are compressed in our brain, and we feel their connection with us. We can describe everything that led us through Saturn, Sun and through the hereditary line to our present birth with the saying: We are born from the Gods.

Just as we would have to remain unconscious if we couldn't dive down into our physical and etheric body in the morning, so passage through the portal of death extinguishes all conscious life. Before the Mystery of Golgotha a man received a consciousness after death from reserve forces that were given to men on their way that gave him consciousness in the spiritual world. But this gift of the Gods had gradually been used up, and a Greek knew that it was his lot to live in the realm of the shades after death. This was in accordance with the will of the Gods. Consciousness was shadowy and dim, and that's why Greeks had one of their greatest men say: Better to be a beggar in the upper world than a king in the realm of the shades.

A new substance was created through the Mystery of Golgotha that could give consciousness to men when they were in the spiritual world after death. This substance flowed out of the Mystery of Golgotha. A man can develop consciousness in the spiritual world after death through an immersion in this Christ substance. That's why every evening when we go to sleep and into the spiritual world we should remind ourselves of this and permeate ourselves with the feeling: We die in Christ.—For only the Christ impulse can keep us conscious in the spiritual world after death through its death-overcoming vital force. But there's nothing in the physical world that's great and holy enough to enable one to understand this Mystery that was given through Christ Jesus, so one shouldn't use anything that belongs to the world, not even the words of language in order to refer to this Mystery, the great unfathomable secret that's contained in what flows out from the Mystery of Golgotha. That's why an esoteric is silent in word and thought at the place where the sacred, unspeakable name would have to be said. He just feels the sacredness of this moment: In ... morimur.

But even if a man has consciousness after death, he doesn't have self-consciousness yet, that through which he recognizes himself as an individual being in the spiritual world and finds himself together again with the brothers and sisters he was with in the physical world. The only thing that can help us to find our being again and to awaken with self-consciousness after we were immersed in Christ substance is our experience of our higher I that's given to us by the Holy Spirit, through whom we have to hope: We'll be resurrected in the Holy Spirit and will awaken to self-conscious life.

My dear sisters and brothers! If we heed and do everything that's been given till now in the Mystery dramas and esoteric lessons, if we really do all of this in complete devotion, then we can already get very, very far into high spiritual worlds. Moderns don't need anything more to get into very high spiritual worlds. We must live entirely in meditation, concentration and contemplation, and leave everything else outside. One can only attain something by sticking strictly to the prescribed rules. Meditation time must be looked upon as something beautiful and elevated in our esoteric life. During meditation one should first immerse oneself completely in the content of the exercises. So one must empty the soul of all everyday thoughts and feelings and must live in the content of the given exercises. And then make the consciousness devoid of content—also of the meditation material – and listen while one is awake. It's true that this is quite difficult. Some say that they hear their blood pulsing, and that this disturbs them. That's all right—let them hear the blood pulse. Then they'll sense the life in blood and thereby become aware of a piece of inner life.

Exoteric life takes place in the world of cognition. We know something because we confront an object, look at it and make mental images of it. This changes the moment we meditate. Through meditation we enter another world where we have our ideas, thoughts and concepts before us, outside us: we know that we're connected with them. But we can't get rid of them, we run after them. Thoughts ascend from the soul's depths. We see beings like carnivorous animals that devour them. We connect ourselves completely with the thoughts, etc. So we experience things here, whereas in exoteric life we know them. In meditation we're in a world of experience. We shouldn't immediately make ideas about what approaches us in this world. We should just open ourselves, listen and feel what wants to stream into our soul. This develops the lotus flowers so that they can become active. Further on we arrive at the world of bliss or shapes. But only one who has prepared himself for this world experiences it as a world of bliss. For an immature person it's full of terrifying things and it tears him apart. For him love turns into hate there, beautiful into ugly and he now likes what was disgusting to him before, and so on. Everything is in reverse. One only becomes really mature enough for a correct experience of this world of shapes if one goes through a training in self-discipline. What did the Gods do to protect us from an experience of this world of shapes before we're mature? They gave us pleasure, the enjoyment of creative activity here in the physical world. The beauty that we feel in a work of art, in a Raphael, in a Leonardo, such as were shown in scene three of Guardian of the Threshold isn't the permanent thing, also not the art work itself, but what's eternal is the spiritual part—what went on in the artist's soul as he worked, from which the work of art was created.

What is God in maya? What has to be said now must sound rather paradoxical. God is not what we experience in the spring in up-building forces, in shooting, sprouting things, in all beautiful and luminous things—God is real and active where we see destructive powers of nature; God is in autumn storms, in all shattering, disintegrating and crushing things. It sounds horrible and shocking, but it's a fact: God is most active in all destructive and disintegrating things. We're given pleasure from work with physical things to protect us from entering the world of shapes, of bliss too soon. In waking day consciousness we're separated from it as by a thin layer of ice. While we're in esoteric training we shouldn't bring these esoteric teachings into exoteric life or want to regulate exoteric life in accordance with these teachings. That could only lead to folly. Our education in exoteric life must result from exoteric pedagogical principles. One could set it up as an ideal that esoteric life should run completely independently. We must preserve absolute equanimity with respect to spiritual experiences, just as we should remain calm in everyday life with respect to all events, ideas, etc., so that we don't get excited or upset. One attains this equanimity by reverently thinking, feeling and living oneself into the three mantras, It thinks me—It works me—It weaves me, by letting these 3 sentences go through one's soul over and over again. And then we'll also understand our rosicrucian verse in the right way:

Ex Deo nascimur
In Christo morimur
Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus.

The way we say “I think,” “I feel,” “I will” in ordinary life is really maya. It's only with “I am” that we're saying something that's true. Regarding our thoughts we can often notice that they press in from all sides when we would really like to exclude them. This shows that we don't think ourselves, but that beings are thinking in us. If only the progressive, good Gods had worked in us we would never have been under the illusion that it's we who think. Instead of falling into a deep, dreamless sleep at night we would have seen a big Imagination of our thoughts and ideas around us, permeated completely by the life and substance of higher beings. We would then have remembered this during the day and we'd always know that higher beings' life is in our thoughts. But Lucifer worked and wove himself completely into our thought life. If this imagination would appear it would show us that almost all of our thought life has become luciferic. And during the day we would constantly feel how terrible it is that Lucifer thinks in me. To protect us from this unconscious sleep comes over us at night, and we live in the maya idea that we think ourselves. But we esoterics must learn to face the truth. We get the strength to bear the thought that Lucifer thinks in us if we often meditate on the mantric statement, It thinks me, while we're completely permeated by piety.

It's easier to see that we're not masters of our feeling life. Feelings storm up in us, and we often can't control them very much. If our development had remained connected with progressive powers only here, then nocturnal Imaginations would have shown us that our feelings are of the same substance as the life that weaves through nature's great life realm. We would see plants' etheric archetypes, that are quite different from physical plants, and we would know that what pulses through the etheric life realm is also in our feelings. We would then remember this during the day as we looked at outer nature. But Ahriman has worked into all of this, and so we can say that in favourable cases he lives in maybe two thirds of our feelings, but most often it's more like three quarters of them, and the good Gods only live in a very small part of them. And we would see this in an Imagination at night because we would remain conscious, and during the day when we looked at nature outside we would know that Ahriman lives in our feelings that are related to weaving in the life realm. And we would think that it's terrible that Ahriman feels in us. To get the strength to bear this truth we must meditate on the sentence: It weaves me—with intense thankfulness to the good Gods who haven't left us completely yet. As far as our will impulses go it's very clear that our will is almost always determined by causes outside us, that the outer world's attractions and stimulations drive us to our actions. Here too, if Lucifer and Ahriman hadn't intervened we would have seen the working of spiritual beings at night, and we would have felt that they were united with this. And during the day we would have known nothing else than a working in agreement with what is willed by the good Gods. Our will would be the will of the spiritual world. But Ahriman's influence has also worked into this, and we should also see and know this during the day and we get the strength to bear this by meditating: It works me—with deep reverence for high spiritual beings.

So we see that the above mentioned “I think,” “I feel,” “I will” is really given to us in ordinary life as maya, since we can't bear the truth. Meditation on the mantra: It thinks me—It weaves me—It works me—can give a man a mighty push forwards into the spiritual world all by itself without other meditations.

The following about the letters in these mantras is also of importance.

It thinks me, Es denkt mich = e e i is getting close to another being with shyness and reverence; i is the union with this being whom we're approaching. But the d t indicates a feeling of still being reverentially separated. In It weaves me, Es webt michwe have the same e e i but w instead of d, a much more intimate approach. One weaves and waves completely into the other being; the waviness of the w carries us over all by itself. Everything is completely reversed in It works me, Es wirkt mich: e i i. One is entirely in the other being and works from there; one has united with it completely.

The ten words of the rosicrucian verse are arranged in such a way that the letters are also of importance. In Ex Deo nascimur we have the mood that we can feel on awaking with respect to our body, e e o a i u. In e we have a shyness to approach our physical and etheric bodies that the Gods built up during long world periods, o is a wanting to embrace, a is a stepping back with tremendous reverence, i is a wanting to unite, and u holds all of this together. In ... morimur—the statement in which we have this unspeakable word. We can call this a post-mortem mood, dying in Christ, i i o o i u: being one, embracing, becoming completely united, all of this summarized. Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus. This expresses the attainment of self-consciousness in the spheres we enter after death. Here the consonants are more important; p r = feeling that one is placed in something, i stands for the I-feeling, the realizing oneself as an I, self-consciousness in the post-mortem state, s is the spinal column's form. Thus the masters have placed the secrets of the creative word in here, and ever more secrets can be found in it. Ten words: the ten-fold being of man, of which the fifth is the unspeakable name.

Our study today will be devoted to how a soul can raise itself into spiritual worlds. One who does his exercises regularly with patience and enthusiasm must also make progress; it's just a matter of him becoming aware of his progress.

After the meditation it's good to begin a rest period, to make the soul quite empty, to just wait and see what Imaginations come to us from higher worlds. Much also depends on the mood or attitude of our soul; we should always approach our exercises with the greatest devotion. The experiences that set in depend upon the meditator's individuality and karma. I'd like to pick out two of them from a large number. One is of being lifted out into space, into endlessness. One feels as if one were expanded and lifted up; of course a leaving of one's body is connected with this. This experience gives rise to a feeling of bliss and happiness. While one is raised one sees a reddening; yellowish red clouds come towards us from which Shapes gradually crystallize. Then there's a second experience of diving down, of sinking into the depths, accompanied by a feeling of constriction and choking. The spiritual beings one feels in this immersion appear to one in blue-violet gleams. They give a man a feeling of reverent, shuddering fear and induce him to take a look at himself. They show a man what he's really like, all of his defects and mistakes and moral weaknesses in their whole magnitude and abominable nature. It's true that we're already pointed in this direction by the retrospect that we do every evening, but a man can't see things as clearly with his physical consciousness. These beings who emerge from the depths get us to see plainly what habitual mistakes and wrong thinking produce in us. The beings who appear to us in a bluish violet light and show us our errors belong to the angels, whereas the upper, reddish yellow light figures that pronounce their judgment like punishing justice belong to the archangels. These experiences can also approach a man in a different way, namely through sounds. When his judgment is pronounced by an archangel with a thunderous voice it's much more scary, much harder to bear. But when a man has come to this hour that sets in after he's experienced the Guardian of the Threshold then he must have gotten rid of the habit of being afraid.

Just to be understood, let's mention an example, though the Imagination could just as easily take on another form. A man can see the figures that ascend from the depths in blue-violet colour tones with sorrowful, pain-filled faces. These high beings feel sad about us and our mistakes; this arouses a feeling of boundless shame in us. If a man sees his errors and regrets his mistakes he will see that these beings' faces radiate joyfully. A man must feel this connection between the microcosm and the macrocosm. The beings who sink down on man as punishing justice and sometimes surround him evoke fear in him. But a feeling of joy can be added to this if these beings show him the possibilities that are in him and that he can develop. We can arrive at these experiences if we meditate it thinks me in the right way. But when a man sees how these figures out of balled-together reddish clouds try to join the bluish violet figures that are striving up from the depths, something like a conflict arises in him. He distinctly hears a voice that says: Don't believe that, believe what comes out of your own soul. That has the same value as what you see out in the cosmos.

That's Lucifer's voice, and this is the greatest temptation that a man can have, since Lucifer outshines all other beings in beauty, cunning and seduction. Like the blue-violet beings he climbs out of the depths. We should also realize that form is no longer of importance in these regions. The Spirits of Form who are called Elohim in the Bible are of importance on the earth. In spiritual worlds we find that we lift ourselves above them and can approach the Spirits of Movement.

One thing we should never forget: a feeling of deepest thankfulness towards higher beings and spiritual worlds. Just as an Essene saw the day-star approaching every morning full of thankfulness and prayed that it might appear, so we should return to the temple of our physical body every morning with reverent thanks to the spiritual beings who built it up so cleverly during the Saturn, Sun, Moon and earth periods, and in which alone we can acquire earth consciousness: Ex Deo nascimur. And then with this feeling of reverence and thankfulness that we've gained we become familiar with the spiritual, Godly element, with what frees us from the fetters of corporeality, brings us into the spiritual, super-sensible world and gets us into a blissfulness that's so great and tremendous that an esoteric doesn't dare to say the name of the very highest being: In ... morimur. And what's expressed in the last part of our rosicrucian verse: Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus is the self-consciousness that brings a man over into a new incarnation. But a living in the vowels and consonants of this wonderful verse will bring us much further than meditation on the three parts that consist of 2x3 and 1x4 words.

Our meditations should gradually bring it about that we press into higher worlds body-free and learn to know and see things there. It's not just a matter of getting into higher worlds but of how we do this—the attitude with which we enter higher worlds must be a good and moral one. Now to begin with it's the case that a man as a sensory-physical being on earth is abandoned by good. He doesn't feel the moral element, the good that could and should speak to him out of the whole of creation any more. To give man freedom Lucifer has as it were pulled the moral element out; a man must now awaken it in himself, find it again and then bring it back to the spiritual, divine worlds.

When a man looks at the sun rising and setting today he doesn't feel any moral impulses streaming to him from it. If it wasn't for Lucifer he would feel: forces flow from the sun that pulse through me in such a way that I know and feel that I'm an I. If a man looks at the moon with what astronomy gives him he then knows that in the time from new moon to full moon and back again there are certain equilibrium constellations, where one first sees a quarter, then a half and then a whole illumined surface. What a man no longer feels is that if the constellations were completely different, if the moon would change its position very slightly beings like men would no longer be able to live in their physical bodies; for reproductive forces flow from the moon. If a man stares at Mercury he can no longer see that without Mercury no connection between sun and moon forces, between ego and reproductive forces would be made. Likewise with Venus he does not feel that without its mild light none of the love relations that make him happy would exist.

Lucifer has completely permeated man's astral body with egoism. This is necessary for the sake of a development towards freedom and independence of the individual. But things should not go so far that a man becomes insensitive to moral things. However this is the case with respect to nature, to the elements, for instance. A man would have to feel from air, fire, water, earth that they're there to create a punishing adjustment for human sins, that living in elemental forces there's a sickening force that we should and must let work on us in order to purify ourselves.-The same words are true or false depending on whose mouth they come from. In Lucifer's mouth “nature is sin, spirit is devil” is mockery. But it's true in the sense developed above, that material nature is supposed to punish us for our sins and that we should feel the spirit in nature as something that makes us sick and brings us suffering. For pains, suffering is the God-given means to recognize egoism and to overcome it. In Lucifer's mouth the word “Ye shall be as Gods” is a lie, but understood correctly it's true. Christ says: “Ye are Gods”—sons of the Godhead. A man is called upon to become a God. What does a modern materialist who divides the world into physical, material atoms want to do? He wants to perpetuate forces of sin. For matter is condensed injustice. Matter must dissolve into spirit again through spiritual development. We must wrest the morality that's placed in nature by divine, world wisdom from it again. Rosicrucian wisdom saw this whole materialistic development coming and so it gave means and showed ways to a heightened morality without which one shouldn't enter higher worlds, for one's own good. Otherwise one might get in, but then one doesn't find Lucifer there as he should approach one as a guide in knowledge of higher worlds, but all the more as a seducer who shows and simulates all kinds of divine spiritual things to one that don't really exist.

We should say Ex Deo nascimur and look up to the moon with an elevated soul, as to the giver of the opportunity to incarnate repeatedly and to perfect oneself on earth in a physical body. In Christo morimur, while looking up to the sun in order to feel oneself as an ego-being, as a spiritual-divine being through Christ, the spirit who is connected with the sun. Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus, while looking up to Mercury and Venus that don't appear in physical copies but become manifest purely spiritually. Because the power of the spirit that teaches men about spiritual love is divided between them and the other planets. Plato still felt as an echo that man is abandoned by the good, that the good lives withdrawn in the deep lap of the Gods when he said: God is good. Christ Jesus said: No one is good except God.

We want to strive ceaselessly towards higher morality so that we become capable of feeling moral impulses out of nature, sun, moon, stars and of bringing the moral element back to the spiritual world, that was taken out of it by Lucifer for the sake of our freedom.