The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Great seriousness should reign in esoteric life. An esoteric lesson should be something sacred, something that we're entrusted with, and we should never take it to be something ordinary. Probably none of us were aware of the necessary seriousness when we asked to be taken into this esoteric circle. We should place this seriousness before our soul ever more now and try with all of our might to make a connection with the spiritual world, that we can do through an esoteric training, so that we don't fall back into everyday life. One should look upon all exercises that are given to us as ones that come from the masters of wisdom and of the harmony of feelings. In esoteric life one should pay particular attention to egoism. We often tell ourselves that we're doing something selflessly, or we're unaware that we hate or envy someone, and as an esoteric we think that we should tell him the truth or should not have to take this or that from him. When such feelings arise we should realize that we're living in great delusions that are always caused by egoism. Such feelings always become manifest with a feeling of warmth that goes through the warmth ether part of our life body and also works on the physical body through the blood.

We must realize that such feelings have a harmful effect on world evolution. The hierarchies who have the task of regulating karmic connections then get Luciferic beings to destroy these effects by working harmfully right down into the physical body.

An icy cold feeing goes through us when we see our wickedness, whereas we get a warm feeling from satisfied passions when we don't have self-knowledge. A clairvoyant can see them in mostly human shapes.

A man is often more untruthful than he realizes. Many say: I don't really have any dishonesty in me, I have discarded that entirely. But this dishonesty is often so slight that we're usually not aware of it. Say that we read that there's going to be a theosophical lecture in some city and we decide to go there We don't stop to think that a dear friend lives in that city whom we would like to see again, or that there'll be a party there that we want to go to. We think that we only want to go there because of the lecture, whereas there are other reasons.

Our education may have gotten us to the point where we don't tell any big lies, but we may still have the desire to appear better than we are or to conceal the truth if it would make us look bad. All of this has a harmful effect on all world events. Such dishonesties work on our astral body, then on the life body's light ether and then on our physical nerves.

Azazel makes us aware of all such dishonesties. He and the beings he leads mostly have human heads with raven's wings. With egoism, envy, and hate when we wake up we have a feeling of disgust that must be ascribed to our doppelganger's action, whereas one who tends towards dishonesty wakes up with a choking, scratchy feeling in his throat. He'll feel as if he was being pinched by pincers and tortured by a thousand arms. Azazel and his hosts do that. And if we sense his action in the way indicated, it should make us realize how deeply entangled in lies and dissimulations we still are.

A third thing is indifference and dullness with respect to spiritual worlds. Many pupils listen to an esoteric lesson, but what's given doesn't find an echo in them. They can't get away from ordinary, daily life. They can't raise themselves spiritually or occupy themselves with spiritual thoughts. Others are curious and would like to see or experience something in the spiritual world, and they mediate without studying regularly because they're too lazy to do so. This works directly on the ego, from there on the astral body, then on the life body's chemical ether and then on the body's glands and fluids. Azael is at work in this. Azael and his hosts only want to bring about good effects in nonesoterics by working on them in a supplementary way, and not so that he makes them sick. The effects go deeper in an esoteric, and he's always supposed to be aware of his complete feeling of responsibility towards himself and the world.

On awakening, a dull esoteric will feel like he's drowning in a flood, which feeling will be all the stronger the more he gives himself up to everyday sensory life.

An esoteric should always be watching himself. It doesn't hurt if he sometimes broods about himself. That's the only way he'll understand what's suggested to us at the end of every esoteric lesson by the masters of wisdom and of the harmony of feelings:

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.

Today we'll clarify how one should answer questions that approach one in esoteric life. An esoteric should never answer: “What is the heart?” by saying that it's the cause of blood circulation, for he shouldn't give physical causes for things. Everything physical, all of our organs and the whole human being are only symbols of something spiritual, of what higher hierarchies have created. Spirits of Motion already worked on our blood circulation on the old Sun. Then Spirits of Form descended and pressed forms and signs on all created things; and so the heart is only a sign for work that higher hierarchies did on us.

Everything that surrounds us is just maya. Good Gods created this world of maya for men, as it were, like a flower out of the real world so that man develops through it, kindles his ego on it, and penetrated it to get back to the world of real things once again. A man definitely needs this world of maya in his present condition. That's the way one should interpret Goethe's saying: for what is this beautiful world, the starry heavens there except for man to be delighted by it? This is a seemingly naïve expression for the fact that the world in this form and as we perceive it with our physical senses is really only there for us. For in reality, in the world of real things, everything appears with its spiritual causes behind it.

The world of maya doesn't exist for minerals, plants and up through cold-blooded animals. But it exists for warm-blooded animals, although the latter have no ego that could become ignited by it. These animals give a clairvoyant the impression that they have been brought into evolutionary conditions that they're not adapted to, and this upsets one. That's why the humanoid apes give one such a grotesque impression.

As we should become ever more aware, an esoteric should wrest himself away from maya and connect himself with the world of real things. He can only do this through the meditations from the spiritual worlds that are given by the masters of wisdom and of the harmony of feelings, those personalities who support the work of the higher hierarchies. For instance, they gave a concentration exercise that enables us to help in the work on evolution. It may take hours and many attempts, but if an esoteric concentrates on the place where he feels the heart in him, he'll notice that his thoughts don't remain with the heart he's concentrating on—they ray or pour out from there, and he'll see something like a rising, shining star whose center is the archetype of what the heart is the sign for. And the star's lines and rays will begin to resound and the sounds will become words, the primal words that created the heart out of the world of real things. And when the words are translated they're the words of the prayer to the Sunday spirit: Great embracing Spirit, many archetypes sprouted out of your life. (See EL 58) The star's rays are always the words: You were. Whereas the lines in between are the other words.

Thus an esoteric arrives at such an experience through correct, serious exercises. Although many don't do their mediations intensely enough, one who does can penetrate the world of real things, and depending on what he brings with him, he'll feel comfortable or repelled by it. The latter gives him pain and suffering, but necessarily so. For the good Gods can only tolerate what fits into their world; everything else is rejected.

An esoteric may often still have qualities that he's not fully aware of but which work on his development and that he's made aware of by certain indications. If an esoteric does his exercises diligently and correctly, and he wakes up at night with a feverish feeling, he can oppose this with a psychic coldness; and then he has a definite feeling that he's not alone, that he has awakened a doppelganger in himself through his esoteric training. Who is that? And what does he want? The good Gods have, as it were, hired certain Luciferic spirits to keep the qualities of men that don't belong in their world out of it. One of them is Samael, who counteracts our hate and envy. We notice him through the feverishness that befalls us as long as we're still full of these defects.

Another being becomes active if an esoteric hasn't overcome a certain untruthfulness that we're all guilty of, and that often lies so deep in our subconsciousness that we don't notice it. For instance, someone may decide to go to a theosophical meeting in another city because it would be instructive and good for him. But in reality he has quite different motives for going there, for instance, he wants to meet somebody there, but he doesn't admit this real reason to himself. Another dishonesty that's hard to notice is the following. We often think that enthusiasm is driving us into spiritual worlds, whereas we only want to wallow in the enjoyment of the feeling that results from occupying oneself with such things. Now if we do our exercises correctly and we want to press into spiritual worlds, we might get a feeling of being choked or of someone sitting on our chest. The Luciferic being who causes this is Azazel. He hinders us from entering the spiritual world before we've gotten rid of all lies.

If we do our daily duties in a lazy, inattentive and careless way, we might have a drowning feeling on awaking, as if our air was cut off and we were melting and flowing away.

The attention that we should pay to the surrounding world is of greater importance than most people think. If we exercise with real joy, it's a big help in pressing into spiritual worlds. For we should think of the spiritual causes behind every thing and encounter. Spiritual beings have to do what we don't do, because the work must be done.

Here's an example of how inattentively we often do our work. A new educational program was being started at a school, and all its teachers had to take an exam. The humane school inspector told himself: I won't ask the older teachers what they learned at the seminar long ago—they wouldn't remember it. I'll only ask them what they taught every day. But it turned out that many of these teachers did not know what they'd had their students repeat to them maybe twenty times. That's how little they'd been paying attention.

Like these teachers, we're often not thinking about our work. And the being who has to make adjustments for this is called Azael in occult parlance.

These three things are direct defects. A fourth quality we must also get rid of is avoiding one's karma, instead of courageously going to meet it. Under such circumstances if we want to press into the world of real things, we'll wake up in the morn with a feeling of being fettered, as if we were returning to a prison, and our whole body will hurt. This is brought about by Mehazael.

Of course exoterics must also bear the consequences of their defects, but they become manifest in them differently—as corporeal diseases for instance—and they don't become aware of why they got something like that. An esoteric should gradually bring everything into his consciousness, and esoteric schools help him with this. Of course what we perceive of such a school with our senses is only a very small part of it—a faint, outer sign. Just as everything physical, also sensations that we perceive, are only symbols for realities, so what an esoteric school looks like on the physical plane is only a symbol for what it is on the spiritual one. When such a school forms, it's mostly the case that a man immerses himself say in the heart through concentration. The experience forms itself into a formula in him which he can pass on to a number of pupils, whereby they're reconnected with spiritual realities. Our closing mantra expresses this creative force that's active in the spiritual.

In the spirit lay the germ of my body.
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.

Today we'll ask ourselves what we learned through our exoteric study of theosophy. At least theoretically the answer will be that we've become aware that the whole world and our physical body is maya or illusion. At least we assume this theoretically, and it more or less remains a hypothesis for us. But when we begin an esoteric training this acceptance of a mere hypothesis should increasingly become a truth. We should become deeply aware that we don't really have a firm ground in which we can take root that we only live on the surface of the foaming sea of life, that we never dive down into the real sea of reality, and that therefore we're always a plaything for illusions. Those who want to tread an esoteric path should and must arrive at this insight A certain feeling of despair, fear, and being abandoned will arise in most of them. The fear will be like that of someone standing at the edge of an abyss. Despair and forlornness will envelop a budding esoteric, because all the supports he thought he had in life will fall away from him like maya or illusion. His God seems to be torn away from him, because he only sees the false and delusive things in creation; this knowledge can make an atheist out of him.

And why must we tread this path, why must we look deep into the world of illusion, why have the Gods placed us in this unreal world? For they could have given us true reality instead of this play of life's wave on the surface. We'll see later that it's wise and good that the world is maya, illusion. If everything was true reality, we wouldn't look for truth and perfection any more. We couldn't develop any capacities, and since there wouldn't be anything wrong, no vices could exist. So we couldn't acquire virtues, we couldn't develop freely at all. Since we would always be living in the active, ruling Godhead, we'd never have an opportunity to freely dive down into the depths of reality, or to look for real knowledge. We would stop looking for God. “Looking for God” has a deep biblical meaning that one can only understand esoterically. After creating for six days, God rested on the seventh day. God had been active during the recapitulations of Saturn, Sun and Moon evolution, and he rested on the seventh day, after the world had been created. Then God couldn't be found anymore out to the horizon of our earth evolution. He was invisible, and this is deeply significant.

What's really divine is hidden behind visible creation—that's the great truth that we must look for behind sensory illusion. And since the world is illusion, it gives us an opportunity to develop our I through all false maya so that we shall find reality and the Gods. And what path does estoteric training point out to us, what means does it give us so that we can arrive at a knowledge of higher worlds faster than a man in everyday life? It gives us certain concentration and meditation exercises through which the soul forces in us can be awakened and that would otherwise remain slumbering in us for a long time yet. I want to emphasize that a pupil shouldn't go on this path out of blind confidence in his teacher or out of a blind reverence for him, because that would be the completely wrong way. He should use his own intellect in everything he does, and he shouldn't let other people think for him. He should test everything including what's connected with his exercises and meditation. When he's immersed in meditation, he shouldn't think that it has a suggestive effect, for that would be an entirely wrong assumption. They can't have a suggestive effect because they're put together in such a way that anyone can arrive at the imagination to which the exercises only point. Let's look at the meditation: In pure rays of light … what could have a suggestive effect here, since the content indicates something unreal? For anybody who says this knows that the Godhead can't be found in light rays. The exercise is like a symbol that stimulates us to create an imaginative picture while we try to immerse our soul in the Godhead of the world. We should let our own intellect speak and not act out of blind faith. It's better to remain in doubt until we arrive at a knowledge of the truth through our own efforts. Someday we'll get to that point.

And what's the other unavoidable experience one has by faithfully doing the exercises? It's a splitting of the personality.

A man will begin to feel as if something was accompanying him, something that thinks and hears with him and even speaks with him if he's inwardly weak. It's a second ego that emerges, a doppelganger that one has placed outside one. The more seriously someone treads the esoteric path, the more of his old man he places outside him, that is, he sheds one skin after another like a snake. These skins become like a second body, a doppelganger who never leaves one again for the rest of one's life. In the old Egyptian mysteries someone who had placed his double outside him was called a kha man. The double is chained to the kha man to constantly remind him what he was or still is. That's not always a pleasant feeling. But the awareness that he always has his double with him will remind him of his defects and that he should improve himself. He should constantly feel this presence, otherwise things would get dangerous, and because of his many, high ideals and intentions, he would forget what his inner life and defects are. Under certain circumstances it could even endanger a high initiate's life if in spite of his high striving he would forget this double for even a moment. He could actually lose his physical body through death, somewhat like one who's concentrating on a sublime problem, forgets to pay attention to traffic and gets run over. The more the double appears the better it is for our development, for otherwise, we would be living under great delusions about ourself. For we can't see the progress we've made; only our teacher can. Let's recall the place in the story of creation where the Elohim had ascended to the sun after they created man. It was only there that they could judge their work: “And the Elohim saw everything that they had made and behold it was very good.” They had attained perfection and that's why they could judge their work.

Yesterday we got to the point in our esoteric training where we place our doppelganger outside us. It's verily not a pleasant feeling when we see all of what we previously had in us unconsciously objectively before us, which then accompanies us wherever we go. We heard that it's a Luciferic being, Samael, with his hosts who brings the doppelganger out of us. From this, one sees that Luciferic beings also do good things and not always bad ones. If we always carried our defects in us unconsciously, we could never become aware of the destructive, ruinous things that they do in our body and in the whole cosmic substance. As long as Samael hasn't brought our defects out from within us, as long as we don't see them objectively before us as our doppelganger, so long the Gods graciously keep us from seeing the ruinous, destructive force of jealousy, hate, envy and other passions and emotions that we stream out into our environment. A clairvoyant sees that these passions tear something down in our physical body and in the cosmos' substance, whereas the good stimulates upbuilding forces. So basically Samael is a blessing for development. He shows us our inner nature all the more accurately the more seriously we take our training in hand. We then see defects objectively which we hadn't paid any attention to previously. Now we'll become increasingly disgusted with them and they'll spur us on to get rid of them.

An esoteric will then unavoidably have a feeling as if he couldn't get any air, as if he would suffocate. This feeling arises because the pupil begins to pay attention to his subtle soul stirrings, especially to the untruthfulness that slumbers potentially in every man. We don't mean the cruder lies and hypocrisies that lower natures generate, but the finer nuances that we don't notice through our superficiality and which we often do not even acknowledge. As an example, let's assume that someone learns that a theosophical lecture is going to be given someplace. He thinks: That's something good, I'll go there—but at the same time he thinks that he'll meet someone there whom he'd like to be with. Nevertheless, he tells himself that this isn't the main reason so that he imagines he's really going there on account of the lecture.

Such things happen every day; one lies to oneself and doesn't want to notice it. But now the untruths we hadn't noticed crowd into our consciousness so we think that they'll suffocate us.

Another example will show us how much men live on the surface in all of their actions and even in their duties. (Followed by the example of teachers who were supposed to be tested a second time and didn't know what was in the textbooks that they used every day.) This superficiality spreads out over our whole soul life, so that we don't even see the lies that we tell ourselves.

When we first begin to exercise we might not notice much progress; thoughts about daily life stream to us from all sides. It'll take a long time for us to notice any results from our exercises and for a second being called Azazel to begin to draw our attention to our superficiality, Samael and Azazel must both bring something out of us, but a third being must bring us something. He must bring us a longing for a higher, spiritual life. The next example shows us what's meant by this. A scientist who's fired by a desire for knowledge and would like to know everything suddenly finds himself at a wall, so that he can't press on with his intellect. In most cases he'll say: A human intellect can go no further, and he will resign himself to this. But others who feel that their soul is more alive will look further and will be led to spiritual science. There they think they can investigate beyond the limits that materialistic science has set up before them. But as soon as they tread an esoteric path, they'll feel like they're drowning. For as a man presses ever deeper into esotericism, the limits move ever further apart until he gets to a point where everything moves away and he's standing over an abyss. He feels no support anymore, everything disappears under his feet. It's only by going further on the path, by eagerly continuing the meditations that it'll dawn on him that maya must fall away before he can know the truth, spiritual reality; Azazel brings us this knowledge; he preserves man from spiritual or intellectual drowning.

Then there's a fourth being, Mehazael. He awakens the feeling in us and makes us aware that we're bound to time and space. The best way to clarify this is to place a condition before our soul that many of us have experienced. This is when we wake up in the morn and feel burdened by duties and worries that are like chains that the new day brings with it. This goes together with another one of wanting to shake off the chains that hold us fettered to this burden that is all the harder to bear since we know that we are powerless against it, that we must end ourselves. Here Mahazael shows us our karma. We'll be able to bear this burden more easily as soon as we tread the esoteric path. Mehazael shows it to us so that we don't resist it uselessly; for thereby we would only make our karma worse instead o shaking if off. And so in the end, these four Luciferic forces are a blessing for us.

We saw that every time we let our rage and hate run wild and we don't master our passions, we pulverize something in us and in cosmic substance, into which our feelings, sensations and thoughts flow continuously. Thereby we not only harm ourselves—we create karma for our environment. So far we've only studied karma theoretically. We'll now see how much deeper and more complicated karma's action is.

To become aware of the whole action of these four beings in us, we must keep on meditating strongly. In addition to meditating on the rose cross and on other things and esoteric verses that are given us, we should try to meditate on feelings and sensations, which is much harder. For instance, if we meditate on sympathy and immerse ourselves completely in this feeling, warmth will stream through us; meditation on antipathy will arouse a cold feelings in us. For instance, if we first meditate on the rose cross and then on a strong will impulse, an impulse for a good deed, we'll then see an inner light and feel a stream of warmth. Our exercises and meditations aren't successful right away; it goes slower with some and faster with others, depending on development and karma One will succeed after fifty times, another will take a whole lifetime, but we should wait patiently and go forward courageously. Where did the sun get the power to appear at the same place every morn and radiate its light?

An esoteric's life should become quite different from what it was before. He's really leading two lives—one that gradually crumbles and dies, and another one that gives him light out of the spirit from which he came. Wise masters in ancient mysteries expressed the dying of the old man and the flaming up of the new man through the Christ spirit in the words: Ex Deo nascimur, In … morimur, because Christ's name was too sacred to utter. Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus.

What we want to attain through esoteric exercises is to concentrate completely on one thought and afterwards to let an empty space arise in us and to wait for what flows to us as a result of our meditation What we attain thereby depends on the intensity of the perseverance that we have applied to this. One might think that one gets ahead faster by changing exercises, but the most profound esoterics have always said that they got the furthest by doing the same exercise with patience and perseverance for years.

One might get a spiritual exercise from someone and then not see him again on this earth. But if this exercise is done correctly and the pupil's karma is favorable, it can last him a whole lifetime and bear fruits for him until he finally finds his teacher in the spiritual world.

When an esoteric applies forces to his inner development, he'll notice that certain bad qualities had become more manifest. One of these is criticism, but an esoteric should realize how this desire to knock other people down arises. We heighten and intensify our egoity through the exercises, and criticizing is a desire to assert oneself, a wanting to be something special, a need to separate oneself. An esoteric loses interest in many outer things that he paid a lot of attention to previously. This goes so far that some esoterics have the feeling they can't see as well as before.

Most of them also complain that their memory isn't as good. But as we pointed out in previous classes this not paying attention to one's environment is a mistake. It can happen that someone doesn't do his exercises intensively enough to fill the inner emptiness with spiritual content, which he now no longer wants to fill with his previous interests. This gives him an urgent feeling, a driving restlessness, a need to fill his inner emptiness from outside. Then he's easily tempted to criticize outer things. In a way, this criticizing is understandable and justified, for after a man first closed himself off from the outer world and now steps out of himself again, he would like to assert himself against the world. But there's an egotism in this that should be suppressed together with the criticizing. When we attain this the forces that we would have wasted otherwise will turn inwards and fructify our soul life. The need to separate himself is something that's quite justified for an esoteric, for he can only make progress in solitude. The feeling of loneliness is unbearable for most ordinary mortals, but an esoteric should learn to tolerate solitude. This promotes his esoteric life a great deal. A man who longs for company dissipates his forces through this longing. It's as if this longing sprayed out from him in all directions He should gather thee forces and turn them inwards instead. That way he'll gain a great deal.

An esoteric must bring two qualities into equilibrium like pendulum swings, first the tolerance of solitude, that is, the strengthening of egoity, and secondly complete devotion to the duty that approaches us from outside, to the point of self-sacrifice or the forgetting of oneself. When we've gotten to the point where our heart longs for solitude in the midst of our surroundings, where the latter makes us suffer and we nevertheless give it our full, devoted love—then we've attained the unification of apparently contradictory qualities.

A third thing we should practice is to be silent about our esoteric experiences. An undeveloped man almost explodes if he has to keep a secret, and he feels very relieved if he can get things off his chest. But an esoteric should consider that this force that threatens to blow one up must be a very strong one if one prefers to store it up inwardly. That's why it says, “Learn to be silent and you'll get the power”—that is, the power to rule things within one. For instance, an occult investigator can perceive how much stronger a man gets when he has to suppress the telling of a secret for some reason. Say that a man has something on his soul that he would like to tell a friend. Intending to rush over to him, he meets another acquaintance at the door, but he doesn't want to tell this one about it. Later it's too late to go to his friend, so he has to suppress his urge to communicate. An occultist will see that the soul in such a person has developed a force that wouldn't have arisen if the man had fulfilled his wish to make his communication. The saying: “The mouth speaks out of the heart's abundance” shouldn't apply to an esoteric.

It might sometimes be good and appropriate for a nonesoteric to tell all, but not for an esoteric. By communicating his innermost feelings and thoughts, he sprays out forces that would have been very necessary for his soul. Every time we're able to keep thoughts and feelings to ourselves, especially ones that are connected with our esoteric experiences and difficulties, we acquire a soul force that we can't lose. One should speak about universally human things and about things that can be useful to people, but not about one's own affairs that are nobody else's business. Where does this need to communicate come from anyway? We seldom feel the need to go to other men because we love them selflessly, but usually because they have qualities that give us something. We should also drop the wish to be coddled. We should be grateful to people if they treat us badly, because then we can exercise our tolerating forces. We should try to love these people anyway, and we'll then notice that this is the right thing to do. An esoteric should also stop complaining. What does he complain about? Mostly about the thoughts that storm in on him from all sides when he begins his meditation. But he should be thankful for this and look upon it as progress that he notices how real the thought world is and that it can assert itself like this. He should just oppose it because he'll get stronger thereby We should figure out how these thoughts do it, look upon them as models of how we can concentrate ourselves and tell ourselves: We should immerse ourselves in meditation with the same intensity—then we'll attract spiritual forces that support us. It would be a very comfortable meditation if angels or other spiritual beings would come beforehand to sweep away the undesired thoughts.

Once an esoteric has overcome all of these qualities and has learned to speak the right amount, he'll arrive at what mystics called the portal of death, because he finds himself in the same condition as a man who has turned all of his interests away from the outer world as he gets ready to die. He has turned inwards or toward divine spiritual things. That's what's meant in the second part of our Rosicrucian verse: In Christo morimur; we die in Christ when we transform ourselves completely and turn toward the spiritual world again. Ex Deo nascimur: We're born from God and must incarnate in the physical. Then it's our task to develop so that we can say; In Christo morimur. We turn away from all physical things and raise ourselves to the spiritual that was always called the Holy Spirit, and in this we are reborn: Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus. The verse that masters of wisdom and of the harmony of feeling gave us:

In the spirit lay the germ of my body.
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.

In our last few lectures we learned that our whole existence is guided by high beings who each in their own way work at world becoming and at our special human features. If we want to connect ourselves with them through concentration and meditation we must fill ourselves with a feeling of humility that can't be compared with the humility that we have in daily life, for this feeling of humility stands too high above every human comprehension, when we connect ourselves with these sublime beings who are also our teachers in the spiritual world. Later on, a man is able to distinguish between real beings and forces that radiate from within him. One can feel in one's heart whether what's seen comes from higher worlds or from within one; it goes through the heart with a warmth and excitement that radiate into it from the cosmos. For the heart is connected with Leo and the sun, and the warmth of these forces participates in spiritual vision.

Now what does it mean to be an esoteric? A man is placed in his karma through all phases of his earth existence. It's impossible for him to escape it, for the consequences of his feeling, thinking and especially of his deeds follow him irrevocably through all of his incarnations, be it sooner or later. He must eradicate the wrongs that he did here on earth, depending on the circumstances into which he's put through his incarnation. Divine guidance sees to this. Before a man takes his own development in hand, everything goes according to regulated laws that nothing can accelerate. But if he begins an esoteric training something quite different happens to him. He frees himself from guidance, takes his development in hand and becomes a different man qualitatively. Through what? Things that he previously thought were desirable mostly love their value for him, his views and attitudes change, and he sees that he often acted unsympathetically in the past. His feeling of responsibility now becomes much more subtle, and he tries to make his wrongs good in every direction, no matter how many outer and inner sacrifices it may cost him. The meditation and other exercises that are given to an esoteric transform his etheric body through daily repetition, assuming that he experiences them in the right way, that is, with the right feelings and through pictures that arise within. Thereby the etheric body gradually separates itself. After these exercises have been done patiently and by giving up one's whole existence for a short time each day, something wonderful will be faintly noticeable to the man on awakening which he can't express in word, for it's a very delicate feeling of an experience in the spiritual world from which he's just returned. After awhile, he sees colors rising before him in which forms take shape, and something quite unlike what he's used to seeing confronts him. At the beginning of spiritual development the things that appear are similar to things in our daily environment, and they often radiate out of our soul as the latter's qualities—so we shouldn't take them to be spiritual experiences right away. One should emphasize that esoteric training doesn't just make a man better. A man may have moral virtues and be ever so intellectually developed, and yet have disharmonious, bad qualities hidden in his soul that are usually varnished over by conventional morals. A man is really worse than one usually thinks. When a man takes his esoteric development in hand, his vices inevitably appear, and here an esoteric must use his whole strength to master them; he brings up his karma and accelerates it through his development. Let's understand this well for we've entered on another life's path; we've now become companions of our sublime spiritual guides who previously directed us, for now we direct ourselves and also take full responsibility for this.

People often say that it's nothing but egoism if a man wants to develop faster than his fellows. But that's not so. As soon as we realize that we have a divine origin and that we must develop ourselves up again to the primal source of our existence, to divinity, then it's even a sin of omission if we say: I don't want to participate in the Godhead, it'll lead me to the goal someday.

There's a lot of intellectual arrogance in a statement like that, for the Gods have laid the germs of our spiritual capacities in us, and when we're aware of this it must be our duty not to let these forces lie fallow or to leave their germination to the general stream of development. We must take the unfolding of our spiritual organs in hand ourselves, we must no longer let ourselves be led—we must become companions of our leaders. It's a difficult path. There can be no question of egoism here for we have duties with respect to the leaders who've previously shown us the path.

It's only natural that in the course of years our esoteric lectures should get ever more complicated and be built up on ones that have already been given. But since our esoteric movement is growing steadily the main disadvantage to this is that things get a little superficial. The ideal would be to have a small group that strives for ever more deepening. One way to counteract the flattening would be if new members would turn trustingly to ones who've been listening to these lectures for years and catch up that way. In general, it would be good if people would chatter less and think more about spreading esoteric teachings in our circles and also about taking them in. It's not the right thing for so many of our members to concentrate their trust so much on one person, that is, mainly on me as the more or less karmic instrument for the spreading of these teachings. Newcomers should turn trustfully to older members in personal and daily affairs, and only get advice from me in questions of esoteric development. Trust is a factor that's very important in the life of a lodge, and the ability to give advice increases in those who are asked for it. We have many physicians in our movement whom I trust completely, as can always be observed. Our members could turn to them in many health matters. There's a particularly strong esoteric life in this place and perfect work is done. Of course some polar disadvantage arise, especially through the coming in of people who don't realize what serious and sacred thing the esoteric life is. It should be impossible for someone who devoted himself to esoteric life to think of leaving it for an external reason, because that only proves how insincere his decision was right from the beginning. Karma creates a quiet destiny for some people the moment they become esoterics so that they can move their exercises into the center of their life. Others run into events which they can't bring into harmony with their esoteric life, sometimes to such a great extent that their esoteric life suffers from it. Of course, the ideal would be if we would irradiate our whole life from our esoteric center, if we had always directed our gaze at it. Something that especially harms esoteric development is the untested, superficial and therefore objectively incorrect criticism that we often direct at people. I'm not saying that criticizing is wrong, but it should always be directed to facts and not at people whom one doesn't happen to like.

Our exercises seem to be something very simple, and yet they're something that works on us more strongly than anything we can encounter in life. What do they bring about? Through them, we're supposed to loosen our etheric body from within and pull it out. At some point in our exercises it'll happen that we don't see, hear or feel anymore, and this happens through the loosening of the etheric body. There are many methods to bring it out, but such external methods that aren't based on meditation are harmful to organs, since the etheric body is repelled form outside, by the eyes, for instance, and they then suffer from this. Only some forces are loosened by meditative withdrawal, so that enough of them are left to maintain biological functions. When we get into this state of not hearing things, etc., we've left our physical body. Although many of us have been doing these exercises for years, we haven't been able to do this. Why not?

People get an uncomfortable feeling before they leave their body, so they resist this instinctively. A man opposed this stepping out of the etheric body more than anything else Even thinking about it hinders it. It's almost like a reflex motion, that one immediately recoils when this feeling comes over one. The reason one resists this is that when a pupil has developed enough intensity to leave his body, he suddenly realizes what a sublime, wonderful temple this body with all of its organs is, and then when he looks at what went out he sees that it's an ugly worm, and this worm resists, because he's shocked at his own ugliness. And then we realize how endless the path to perfection is.

We receive a force through our exercises, and this should pour out from within. Someone may tell us: Nothing is pouring in me. And that's not surprising if he doesn't do his exercises energetically enough and if he rates many everyday interests much higher than his esoteric work.

The first feeling that we get through the etheric body's loosening is a heaviness in the brain and in the whole physical body, which we feel is a weight that doesn't belong to us. We feel that this wonderful structure that's the greatest thing about us is weak and perishable. We made it that way. Divine beings made it increasingly perfect since Saturn, and the Saturn and Sun forces in it are upbuilding ones that would sustain it. But we got something into it with Moon forces, astral things, and earth forces, the ego, that turns these forces outwards in order to transmit percepts to the ego through sense organs. Now in the course of a pupil's training he feels that his senses are a destructive force, a poisonous substance that's inserted in his organism. Just as the astral body and ego were incorporated, so the nervous system, brain and senses had to be transformed so that they could not receive from outside what had previously streamed out through them from within. At this moment a man understood the real cause of death, and in the ancient mysteries one called this: Standing at the portal of death.

Now the I is supposed to make all the things it did wrong good again and to perfect all of its bodies so that we become a true man. It's true that the expression “man” is often not used in the high sense that really underlies it, but an esoteric should always look upon the making of himself into a man as his highest striving. So we should let all imperfect things die in the one whose name is so sacred to us that we don't name him, in order to come back to life again in the perfect, in the Holy Spirit.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We get an increase in spiritual knowledge and forces through hard work at esoteric exercises such as the ones described in How Does One Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds? and in other books. But we must heed certain practical hints that help us to get ahead.

A healthy condition of tiredness doesn't have to prevent us from carrying out concentration and mediation with great willpower. On the contrary. Nature does one part of the work for us, since it dulls the outer sense organs and lessens our ability to take in sense impressions. For the goal is to see without physical eyes, to hear without physical ears and to think without a physical brain. It's precisely when we are tired that we can illumine and warm our being with the luminous thoughts of meditation.

Abstention from alcohol is necessary, for this works on the ego that lives and works in the blood. Meditation pulls the spirit up and loosens its connection with the physical body; alcohol pulls it down and consolidates it in the same. Eating meat makes the spirit heavy. Eating plants makes greater demands on the physical body so that it's busy and can't hinder the spirit's work. But what else is brought about by abstention of fish and meat? The bad about eating meat is the lasting effect of hurting and killing animals. These martyred animals return in the form of creatures who turn their forces against the bodies of the descendents of those who once killed them. Bacteria are re-embodied tortured, killed and eaten animals.

Exercises bring about changes in an esoteric that he must pay attention to if he is to avoid injuries. Firstly, the intellect changes; the guidance of thought becomes different and so does judgment and memory. It becomes difficult for an esoteric to give logical and readily understandable reasons for his actions to an ordinary man. Such grounds aren't at all necessary, for at the decisive moment a real esoteric knows the right thing to do. But if he doesn't pull himself together and lazily avoids doing thought-control exercises, his thoughts may get confused.

Some immature people force their esoteric development and gain a certain power over others; but at the decisive moment they're stopped before they can do greater damage.

Secondly the way one speaks and makes gestures changes. A man must have himself under control so that his nervous system doesn't take over and he does all kinds of impermissible things.

Thirdly the physical body must not become injured by a forced, greedy tempo in esoteric development, otherwise an acute disease may set in, which however is curable and that warns the one who get it.

In the Hebrew mysteries, they spoke of four men who tried to go through the temple's portal—but only one got to it. Only one developed normally through particularly patient and consequent methods and reached the goal. The others who forced their esoteric development were harmed. This shows how necessary a rigorous execution of the accessory exercises is for the harmonizing and consolidating effect on man's whole being.

There are many powerful meditation materials, especially in the Bible. For instance, there's a description of creation's six days, the words at the beginning of John's Gospel, the appearance of Yahweh to Moses in the burning bush, the Gospel stories, “I am the light of the world,” and a particularly effective meditation is 1 Timothy 3:16 in the following translation: The mystery of God's path can be known. He who revealed himself through flesh, although in itself his being is spiritual, who is only fully knowable by angels, but could nevertheless be preached to heathens, who is alive in the faith of the world; he is raised to the Wisdom Spirits' sphere.

What bodhisattvas could give to men was inspired by Spirits of Movement. The lowest things that radiated from the Christ came from the sphere of the hierarchy of the Spirits of Movement. The Christ is above all hierarchies—he belongs to the Trinity.