The Rudolf Steiner Archive

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.

Introductory words in memory of Mrs. Danielson, who died a few months earlier. In a soul's bright moments in the spiritual world it feels united with those who were striving towards the same thing that it was, and the streams of love that are sent to it from here create these luminous moments for it. She's active in the interests of theosophical matters as an angel who makes a connection between theosophists in the north and those in central Europe.

Thursday prayer. About individuality and shame. About the conclusions we should draw from this. We should look upon all of this as something that concerns our own personality. Descriptions of our own being. About the feeling of one's inner being; as if a flask with water were heated from an inner point, and one felt this warmth of the water as if one were the feeling water oneself. How this warmth must then permeate is used as a means of support for esoteric training, and so is abstinence from alcohol and meat. One's spiritual being becomes ever greater and expands out into the cosmos. About the feelings of devotion and reverence. Two forces: angels demons Christ. How esoteric development proceeds. About visions. Indications that it's going correctly; fear, unsteadiness, the ground being pulled out from under one's feet. A feeling of shame, but not of egoism should arise thereby. The counter-forces that a pupil must oppose this with.

One who does the exercises correctly will sooner or later notice the appearance of certain effects. One can tell whether the effects are right or wrong by certain accessory phenomena. If these particular side-phenomena appear, then it's a correct development even if no visions, pictures, colors or light-effects appear. Whether the accessory phenomena can appear is up to one's karma. The teacher can point to the path but he can't remove hindrances.

A human soul's wish for visions and phenomena is often a hindrance to all progress. And if men have them, it's also a mistake to be satisfied with them and to not want to strive further.

First one feels that something becomes alive within one. This feeling is as if we were in water in a vessel with a source of warmth at its center that streams through the water. We must then feel this warmth with our whole being.

Why is it that you're here? From where does your urge for esoteric development come? About 4000 years ago, and so before the Event of Golgotha, the etheric body enlivened the physical body in such a way that not all of the etheric body's forces were used to permeate the physical body, and it was to these forces that an esoteric turned, with these he turned to spiritual worlds. Then about 3000 years ago, all etheric bodies had sunk into the physical bodies, especially in Greece, and those who developed the greatest things in the physical realm felt that the spiritual world was a realm of shades. But now the physical body no longer absorbs all of the etheric body's forces, it rejects them, it is withering, for we are past the middle of earth evolution, and it's only through these force that the physical body can no longer take in that we can live in the spiritual world. And you who felt this urge for esoteric development, who were not satisfied with mere physical life and knowledge, you sensed these unused forces in you; they drove you to seek an esoteric life.

What's the difference between esoteric and exoteric? In exoteric life we get communications that are taken from esoteric life as food for our souls. In esoteric life we try to look into the worlds from which esoteric communications are taken ourselves.

What's given here is not just communications—it's advice that flows from spiritual inspiration. It's not just words, concepts, ideals—it's words, concepts and ideals that are permeated with life, life germs that are sunk into our etheric forces and that should blossom there—they're realities. They've been tested repeatedly by those whom we call the masters of wisdom and of the harmony of feelings.

Esoteric is a source of life and of forces that flow through the world and that should also stream through us. And so every Sunday morn at 9 o'clock you should meditate on: In the Spirit of Mankind I feel united with all esoterics. When we begin our exercises it's of great importance that we first create inner quiet. It can be attained through patience. The only thing we have to combat if the thought: I won't attain it. We should reject this as a temptation. And even if it takes ever so long, the time will come when our thought horizon will become clear, if we just push away the sense impressions and thought that distract us with all the willpower that we muster. We should let the formulas and symbols live in us vigorously and energizingly, shouldn't form thoughts about them but should experience them and feel them to be like an inner light. They must take hold of us strongly, for they are drawn from the unspeakable word that has creative power. This is the Indians' mahavach; it's inspirations from words that sound through spiritual worlds; it's supposed to radiate in us like an inner sun.

Then we must create an inner void by erasing and suppressing everything that arises from memory, including theosophical contents, and just wait for what can rise in our soul—either something entirely new that we've never heard or had a inkling of, or a lively vision of occult facts that we received in exoteric life. Much more strength is needed for independent discoveries than for an intelligent understanding of the Pythagorean theorem or some other already found fact. What's communicated to us now we can also find ourselves, but probably only after 25 incarnations. We have the duty to work a long with the present state of evolution by shortening the path as much as possible.

It has become clear to you from previous studies that if you do your exercises in a serious and worthy way, certain effects will result. A faithful, conscientious self-observation is necessary if you want to notice results soon. But self-observation shouldn't be practiced so that it becomes self-satisfaction; that's a great danger for an esoteric. The exercises have an effect all right, but if there's pride and other inclinations at the bottom of your soul, the effect on you isn't good. All men tend to have delusions of grandeur, but in ordinary life it's soon corrected by the outer facts. There a man soon notices that he can't do certain things, even though he imagined he could before. In occult life this corrective perception doesn't appear as directly, and one must use strict self-control to avoid the danger of pride.

A second danger is in dishonesty while the intellect and memory get worse, and this eventually degenerates into lack of control over one's actions. One finds an antidote for this in the accessory exercises, in the study of theosophy and in joy in nature. Thereby willing, feeling and thinking are strengthened. A study of theosophy is supposed to exercise one's intellect. For it doesn't suffice to take it all on authority and faith; this would bring about a complete loss of intellect and eventually make one immoral. One would then be inclined to quiet one's conscience by quoting an authority. One should check everything with one's thinking. That's why everything is clothed in concepts and words that one can understand, that appeal to one's intellect. One should confirm theosophy with one's thinking.

If you love nature's beauty and enjoy its small things you won't just feel nature in majestic oceans or mountains—like sensation-seeking modern materialists—but in things that can be found anywhere. When higher worlds open up to a man, he shouldn't close himself off from the outer world. He should become familiar with nature and try to understand it, and not criticize it without sympathy. Then every little animal can teach him something. A man shouldn't say: it's only maya. One would have to answer him: Yes, it's only maya but it's Gods' maya and that's beautiful. Why can a man be glad about a tree today? Because the Gods were once gladdened by what was around them. It would be bad for the future if a man walked through the world indifferently, for he would leave a joyless world behind him. Every joy that one has had from small things will give rise to something for others in the future, and not just for oneself. What's true here is that all concealed things will become manifest.

These three things are supposed to have a healing effect on thinking, feeling and willing. In ancient times, men were much more robust and the exercises were more drastic than the one nervous people do today. Ancient Hebrews spoke about four rabbis who went into the garden of maturity; the first became a megalomaniac, the second did mad things, and the third died. That's drastically expressed to point to the corporeal difficulties that can arise in an esoteric from moral and intellectual defects. This also arise in an ordinary person, but not as directly, and he doesn't know about the connection between lies and disease, for instance. An esoteric makes his body much more receptive. He should see a warning in all difficulties and ailments, which the Gods send him to show that something isn't in order; then he should be even more attentive and careful. A man should only say what's been checked and is true. It's not enough for him to excuse himself with an “I said it in good faith.” That's not enough. An esoteric should also never say: “It's not my fault.” That's a denial of karma and it doesn't help, for karma appears anyway. One should be responsible for one's deeds and improve them.

It would be easy and certainly sensational for me to say that my school is inspired—as it really is—but that's not the outer world's business. There, one must appeal to reason, so that people see what's said. That's why one must write in such a way that it makes sense to the human intellect. It's worthless to refer to inspiration or to offer (15 year old Krishnamurti's) book to the world and say that it's inspired by a master of wisdom.

When esoterics from other schools object that they enter other worlds too, then one must realize that the main thing is how one enter them, and not what one sees there. One can be an advanced seer and yet see everything wrong.

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.