The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Thirteenth Lecture

[ 1 ] Yesterday we concluded by outlining the essential features of the three methods of occult development: the Oriental, the Christian, and the so-called Rosicrucian training. Today we will begin to examine in more detail the characteristics of each of these three paths.

[ 2 ] Before doing so, however, I would like to note that in no occult school should what is said and demanded be understood as somehow applying as a moral imperative for all of humanity. That is absolutely not the case; these demands apply only to those who truly wish to devote themselves to such occult development. One can, for example, be a very good Christian and fulfill everything that the Christian religion recommends for the layman without undergoing Christian occult training. If, for example, someone says: “One can also be a good person and attain a kind of higher life without occult training,” there is nothing to object to; that goes without saying.

[ 3 ] I have already told you that within Oriental training there is strict submission to the guru. I will now describe the kind of instruction that the teacher gives within Oriental training. Understandably, no instructions can be given publicly, only the path can be characterized. The things that are given as instructions by the teacher can be divided into eight groups:

1. Yama
2. Niyama
3. Asanam
4. Pranayama
5. Pratyahara
6. Dharana
7. Dhyanam
8. Samadhi

[ 4 ] 1. Yama includes everything we call abstentions, which are incumbent upon those who want to undergo yoga training; and this is expressed more precisely in the commandments: “Do not lie, do not kill, do not steal, do not commit adultery, do not covet.”

[ 5 ] The requirement “Do not kill” is very strict and applies to all beings. No living being may be killed or even harmed, and the more strictly this is followed, the further it leads. Whether this can also be implemented in our culture is another matter. Every killing, even that of a bug, impairs occult development. Whether one must do so is another question.

[ 6 ] “Do not lie” is a requirement that will be easier for you to understand from what I have told you about the astral plane. On the astral plane, lying is the same as killing; every lie is murder. So it actually falls into the same category as killing.

[ 7 ] “Do not steal” must also be carried out in the strictest sense. Europeans will say: We do not steal. But the Oriental yogi does not understand the matter so simply. In the areas where these exercises were first spread by the great teachers of humanity, conditions were much simpler; there, the concept of stealing could be easily defined. But a yoga teacher will not admit that a European does not steal; he takes this very seriously. For example, if I appropriate someone else's labor, if I gain an advantage that is legally permissible but which means exploiting someone else, the yoga teacher calls that stealing. In our social circumstances, things are so complicated that many people violate this prohibition without being the least bit aware of it. Suppose you have a fortune and you deposit it in a bank. You do nothing with it, you exploit no one. But now the banker goes and speculates, exploiting other people with your money. Here, too, you are responsible in an occult sense; it burdens your karma. You can see from this that this commandment requires deep study in occult development.

[ 8 ] The situation is just as complicated when it comes to “not indulging in excess.” A pensioner, for example, whose capital is invested in distilleries by a bank without his knowledge, is just as guilty as a manufacturer who produces spirits. Ignorance does not change karma. There is only one thing that can give a straight direction to these omissions, and that is: striving for freedom from need. To the extent that one strives for freedom from need, one can never harm anyone else.

[ 9 ] It is particularly difficult to practice “desiring nothing.” It means striving for complete freedom from need, approaching nothing in the world with desire, but only doing what the outside world demands of us. Yes, I must suppress my own sense of well-being when I do someone a favor; it is not this feeling, but the sight of the suffering person that must move me to help. Likewise, when I have to make an expense myself, for example, I must not think: I want, I desire, I crave this, but I must say to myself: You need this for the sustenance of your body or for the needs of your mind, everyone else needs it too; you do not desire it, but only think about how best to get through the world. Within the teachings of yoga, the concept of yama is, as I said, interpreted extremely strictly and cannot be easily transplanted to Europe.

[ 10 ] 2. Niyama. This means, for example, adherence to religious customs. In India, where these rules are mainly applied, a question has been resolved that causes many difficulties for European culture. It is easy to say: I am beyond dogma, I only adhere to inner truth and do not care about outward forms. The more Europeans can transcend religious customs, the more sublime they consider themselves to be. Hindus think the opposite and hold fast to the rituals of their religion; no one is allowed to touch them. However, in the Hindu religion, everyone is completely free to form their own opinion about this. There are ancient sacred rites that have a very profound meaning. An uneducated person will have a very elementary idea of them, a person with greater education will have a different, better idea, but neither will say that the other's idea is wrong. The wise man follows the same custom as the less educated. There are no dogmas, but there are rites. In this way, the deeply religious customs can be followed by both the wise and the unwise; both can unite in the rite. Thus, the rites are a binding agent for the population; no one is restricted in their opinion by conforming to a strict ritual.

[ 11 ] The Christian church has pursued the opposite principle; it has imposed opinions on people rather than customs, and the result is that in recent times, formlessness has become the norm in our social coexistence. This is where the complete disregard for all customs that would unite people begins; all forms that symbolically express higher truths are gradually being abolished. This is a great detriment to the overall development of the human being, especially to occult development in the Eastern sense.

[ 12 ] Many people in Europe today believe that they have moved beyond dogma, but it is precisely the freethinkers and materialists who are the worst dogmatic fanatics. The materialistic dogma is even more oppressive than any other. For many, the infallibility of the Pope no longer applies, but the infallibility of the university professor does. Even the most liberal, despite claims to the contrary, is subject to the dogmas of materialism. What dogmas weigh on lawyers, doctors, and so on, for example? Every university professor teaches his dogma. Or also: how heavily weighs upon us the dogma of the infallibility of public opinion, of the daily newspaper! The Oriental yoga teacher demands that we do not step outside the forms that are a link between the wise and the unwise, for these ancient sacred forms are the images of the highest truths. Without forms there is no culture; it is a delusion to believe the opposite. Let us suppose, for example, that someone founds a colony, completely formless, without laws, without rites and religious customs. For those who see through things, it is clear that such a colony can exist quite well for a while, because people still live according to the old forms they have brought with them. But as soon as they lose these, the colony will perish, because without forms, such a colony cannot exist in the long run. All culture must be born out of form. The inner must be expressed outwardly through forms. Modern culture has lost its forms; it must regain them. It must learn again to express outwardly what lives within the soul. Form is essential for human coexistence in the long term. The ancient sages knew this, and that is why they held fast to the practice of religious customs.

[ 13 ] 3. Asanam means assuming a certain physical posture during meditation. This is much more important for Orientals than for Europeans, because the European body is no longer as sensitive to certain subtle currents. The Oriental body is even more refined; it easily senses currents that flow from east to west, from north to south, and from above to below, for spiritual currents flood the universe. For this reason, churches, for example, were built in a certain direction. This is why the yoga teacher has the yogi assume a certain position; the student must have their hands and feet in a certain position so that the currents can flow through the body in a regulated manner. If the Hindu did not bring their body into this harmony, they would completely jeopardize the fruits of their meditation.

[ 14 ] 4. Pranayama is breathing, yoga breathing. This is a very essential and detailed component of Eastern yoga training. It is hardly considered at all in Christian training, but is more important in Rosicrucian training.

[ 15 ] What does breathing mean for occult development? The meaning of breathing lies in “not killing,” “not impairing life.” The occult teacher says: You are constantly killing your surroundings slowly through breathing. — Why? We inhale, hold our breath, supply our blood with oxygen, and then exhale again. What happens in the process? We breathe in air filled with oxygen, combine it with carbon in our bodies, and breathe out carbon dioxide; but no human or animal can live in that. We breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide, the poison; so with every breath we take, we are constantly killing other beings. Bit by bit, we are killing our entire environment. We breathe in the air of life and breathe out air that we ourselves can no longer use. The occult teacher is intent on changing this. If it were only up to humans and animals, all the oxygen would soon be used up and all living things would die out. We owe it to plants that we are not destroying the earth, for they undergo exactly the opposite process. They assimilate carbon dioxide, separate the carbon from the oxygen, and build their bodies from the former. They release the oxygen again, and humans and animals breathe it in. In this way, plants renew the air we breathe; without them, all life would have been destroyed long ago. We owe our lives to them. Thus, plants, animals, and humans complement each other.

[ 16 ] However, this process will change in the future, and since those who are engaged in occult development begin with what others will go through in the future, they must wean themselves off killing through their breath. This is pranayama, the science of breathing. Our modern materialistic age always needs open windows and puts fresh air at the forefront as a remedy. With the Indian yogi, the opposite is true. He locks himself in a cave and breathes his own air as much as possible. The yogi has learned the art of polluting the air as little as possible because he has learned to make use of the air. How do they do this? This secret has always been known in European secret schools; it was called achieving the philosopher's stone or the stone of the wise. If you want to find the philosopher's stone, you have to find the secret of breathing.

[ 17 ] At the turn of the 18th to the 19th century, some of this information leaked out. Much was written about the philosopher's stone in public writings, but it is clear that the authors themselves did not understand much about it, even though everything came from the right source. In 1796, an article about the philosopher's stone appeared in a Thuringian state newspaper, in which, among other things, the following was said: The philosopher's stone is something that one only needs to know, for every human being has seen it. It is something that all people pick up almost every day for a certain period of time, something that can be found everywhere, but people do not know that it is the philosopher's stone. This is a mysterious hint: the philosopher's stone is to be found everywhere. But this strange expression is literally true.

[ 18 ] The fact is that when plants form their bodies, they absorb carbon dioxide and retain the carbon, which they use to build their bodies. Humans and animals then eat the plants, thereby reabsorbing the carbon and releasing it again as carbon dioxide in their breath. This is how the carbon cycle works. In the future, things will be different. Humans will learn to expand their selves more and more, and what they now leave to plants, they will one day accomplish themselves. Just as humans have progressed through the mineral and plant kingdoms, so too will they regress. They themselves will become plants, absorb plant existence into themselves, and go through the whole process within themselves: they will retain carbon within themselves and consciously build their bodies with it, as plants do unconsciously today. They will then produce the necessary oxygen themselves in their organs, combine it with carbon to form carbon dioxide, and then store the carbon within themselves again. In this way, they will be able to continue building their physical framework themselves. This is a great perspective for the future. Then it will no longer kill anything else.

[ 19 ] Now, as we know, carbon and diamond are the same substance. Diamond is crystallized, transparent carbon. So you need not think that humans will later walk around as black people, but rather that their bodies will consist of transparent, soft carbon. Then he will have found the philosopher's stone. He will transform his own body into the philosopher's stone.

[ 20 ] Those who develop occult abilities must anticipate this process as much as possible, that is, they must remove the ability to kill from their breath. They must shape it in such a way that the exhaled air becomes usable again, so that they can inhale it again and again. And how does this happen? By introducing rhythm into the breathing process. The teacher gives instructions for this. Inhaling, holding the breath, and exhaling must be rhythmic, even if only for a short time. With each rhythmic exhalation, the air is improved, very slowly but surely. One may ask: What difference does that make? The saying “constant dripping wears away the stone” applies here. Every breath is such a drop. Chemists cannot yet prove this because their methods are too crude to detect the fine substances involved, but occultists know that this actually makes the breath life-promoting and contains more oxygen than under normal circumstances. But at the same time, the breath is purified by something else, namely meditation. This also contributes, albeit only to a very small extent, to the reintegration of plant nature into human nature, so that human beings come to refrain from killing.

[ 21 ] 5. Pratyahara. The next step is pratyahara, which means the restraint of sensory perception. The person who leads an everyday life in today's sense receives impressions here and there, constantly; he allows everything to affect him. The occult teacher now tells the student: You must hold on to a sensory impression for so many minutes and may not move on to another except by your own free will.

[ 22 ] 6. Once they have done this for a while, they must be able to become deaf and blind to every external sensory impression; they must be able to disregard every external sensory impression altogether and retain only what remains as an idea in their thoughts after the sensory impression itself has been eliminated. When one lives only in ideas, strictly controls one's thinking, and only strings one idea after another by free will, then that is the sixth state: Dharana.

[ 23 ] 7. Dhyanam. Now there are ideas that Europeans do not want to admit do not originate from sensory impressions, but that humans must form themselves, for example, mathematical or geometric ideas. A triangle or a circle are imagined ideas. What I draw on the blackboard are only composite chalk points. Now there are a number of ideas that the occult student must practice intensively. These are symbolic signs that are consciously connected with certain things, for example, the hexagram, a sign that is explained in occultism, and likewise the pentagram. The student keeps his mind sharply focused on such things that do not exist in the sensory world. The same applies to other concepts, such as the species “lion,” which one can only think about. The student must also focus his attention on such concepts. Finally, there are also moral concepts, such as in “Light on the Path”: Before the eye can see, it must wean itself from tears. — This cannot be experienced externally, but only internally. This meditation on ideas that have no sensory counterpart is called dhyanam.

[ 24 ] 8. Samadhi. And now comes the most difficult part: samadhi. One immerses oneself for a long, long time in an idea that has no sensory counterpart, allowing the mind to rest in it, as it were, and filling the soul completely with it. Then you let go of this idea and have nothing left in your consciousness, but you must not fall asleep, which would immediately happen to an ordinary person; you must remain conscious. In this state, the secrets of the higher worlds begin to reveal themselves. This state is described as follows: there remains a thinking that has no thoughts; you think because you are conscious, but you have no thoughts. This allows the spiritual powers to pour their content into this thinking. As long as you fill it yourself, they cannot enter. The longer you hold on to the activity of thinking without the content of thinking in your consciousness, the more the supersensible world reveals itself.

[ 25 ] The teacher's instructions in Oriental yoga training lie in these eight areas.

[ 26 ] Now we will talk about Christian training as far as possible, and it will become clear how it differs from Eastern training. This Christian training can take place on the advice of a teacher who knows what to do and who can always correct what is wrong at every step. But the great guru is Christ Jesus himself. Therefore, it is necessary to have a firm belief in the real existence and real life of Christ Jesus. Without this belief, it is impossible to feel connected to him. Furthermore, it must be understood that this great guru has produced a document that itself provides guidance for training, and that is the Gospel of John. This can also be experienced inwardly, not just believed outwardly, and for those who have absorbed it in the right way, there is no longer any need to prove Christ Jesus, because they have found him.

[ 27 ] This training takes place not merely by reading the Gospel of John over and over again, but by meditating on it. The Gospel of John begins with the words: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word ...” These verses, when properly understood, are material for meditation, and they must be absorbed in a dhyanam-like state. Those who, early in the morning, before other impressions have entered their soul, exclude everything else from their thoughts and live solely in these sentences for five minutes, continuously, for years, with absolute patience and perseverance, will experience that these words are not just something that must be understood; they will experience that they have an occult power, indeed, they will experience an inner occult transformation of the soul. In a certain way, these words make one clairvoyant, so that one can see astral everything that is written in the Gospel of John.

[ 28 ] Following the teacher's instructions, the student first allows the first five sentences of the first chapter to flow through the soul for seven days. The following week, the same is done with the second chapter, and so on with each individual chapter up to the twelfth chapter. You will see what a magnificent, powerful experience this is: how you are introduced to the events in Palestine where Christ Jesus lived, as recorded in the Akashic Records, and how you then actually experience everything that happened at that time. And then, when you reach the thirteenth chapter, you experience the individual stages of Christian initiation.

[ 29 ] The first stage is the so-called foot washing. First, one must understand what this great scene means. Christ Jesus bows down to those who are lower than him. Throughout the world, this humility towards those who are below us and at whose expense we develop ourselves higher should be present. If plants could think, they would have to thank the stone for providing the soil on which they can lead a higher life, and animals would have to bow down to plants and say: I owe my existence to you—and so would humans to the rest of nature. And those who stand higher in human society must bow down to those who work beneath them and say to themselves: If these diligent hands did not do the lowly work for me, I could not stand where I stand. No one could develop higher if the ground beneath them were not prepared. And so it is all the way up to Christ Jesus himself, who bows down in humility to the apostles and says: You are my soil, in you I fulfill the saying: But whoever wants to be first must be last, and whoever wants to be master must be servant of all. The washing of feet signifies the willingness to serve, the bowing down in all humility. This must become the general feeling for those who are developing occultly.

[ 30 ] Once the student has completely imbued himself with this humility, he has experienced the first stage of Christian initiation. He recognizes that he has reached this point by an outer and an inner symptom. The outer symptom is that he feels his feet being washed by water. The inner symptom is an astral vision that occurs with certainty: he sees himself washing the feet of a number of people. This image appears in his dreams as an astral vision, and everyone has the same vision. When he experiences this, he has truly absorbed this entire chapter.

[ 31 ] The second stage is the flagellation. Once you have progressed this far, you must develop a different feeling while reading about the flagellation and letting it sink in. One must learn to stand firm in the face of life's scourging. One says to oneself: I will stand firm in all suffering and pain, in everything that comes my way. —- The outer symptom of this is: one feels, as it were, a punctiform pain all over the body. The inner symptom is: one sees oneself scourged in the dream vision.

[ 32 ] The third station is the crowning with thorns. Another feeling must be added: one learns to endure steadfastly even when one is showered with ridicule and scorn because of the most sacred thing one possesses. The external symptom of this is that one feels a pressing headache. The internal symptom is that one sees oneself crowned with thorns in the astral body.

[ 33 ] Then one can move on to the fourth station: the crucifixion. A new, very specific feeling must be developed here. It is based on overcoming the idea that one's own body is the most important thing; it must become as indifferent to one as a piece of wood. We then carry our body through life and view it objectively; it has become the wood of the cross for us. In doing so, one need not despise it, any more than one would despise any tool. The maturity to reach this stage is indicated by the external symptom: at the time of meditation, red dots appear like stigmata at the exact points known as the holy wounds, namely on the hands and feet and on the right side at the level of the heart. The inner symptom is that the disciple has a vision of himself hanging on the cross.

[ 34 ] The fifth stage is mystical death. It consists of the person experiencing the futility of earthly things, actually dying to everything earthly for a while.

[ 35 ] From this point on, only sparse descriptions of Christian initiation can be given. The person experiences an astral vision in which darkness reigns everywhere and the earthly world has sunk into oblivion. A black veil spreads out like a curtain before what is to come. During this state, he learns everything that exists in the world that is evil and bad. This is the descent into hell, the journey through hell. Then he experiences the curtain being torn asunder, and now the devachanic world emerges. This is the tearing of the temple curtain.

[ 36 ] Then comes the sixth stage, the burial. Just as in the fourth stage one's own body becomes objective, so here one must develop the feeling that not only one's own body is an object, but that everything else that surrounds us on earth is just as much a part of oneself as one's own body. One's own body extends beyond the skin. One is no longer a separate being, one is united with the entire planet Earth. The Earth has become our body, one is buried in the Earth.

[ 37 ] The seventh stage, the resurrection, cannot be described in words. Therefore, in occultism, it is said: The seventh state can only be conceived by those whose soul has become completely free from the brain. It could be described to such a person. Therefore, it can only be mentioned here. The Christian occult teacher gives instructions on how to experience it.

[ 38 ] When a person has experienced this seventh stage, Christianity has become an inner experience of their soul. They are then completely united with Christ Jesus; Christ Jesus is within them.