The Rudolf Steiner Archive

What went on in Max Stirner's soul before he presented his life's work to the world is something that the many people who call his creation that of a cold, sober rationalist have no idea about. I have often met people who have called him that. Then I was always at a loss, because I did not know how to talk to such people. When I read Stirner's book, I felt an echo of suffering and joy, of passions and longings that have shaken the hearts of humanity for centuries, in whose chains almost our entire race still lives today. And I had a sense of the bliss that permeated the breast of the man who could say: “All truths below me are dear to me; I know of no truth above me, no truth by which I must be guided.” Fichte, too, was a proud, powerful personality. But what does he say? “I am a priest of truth; I am in her pay; I have bound myself to do everything for her and to dare and suffer for her.” Max Stirner is a conqueror without equal, for he is no longer in the pay of truth; truth is in his pay. “The owner,” says Stirner, ‘can cast off all thoughts that were dear to his heart and inflamed his zeal, and will ’gain a thousandfold again, because he remains their creator.” Those who can live through in their souls what it takes to free themselves not only from the chains of slavery that God, humanity, humanity, justice, the state impose on us, but also from those forged by the «eternal truth» eternal truth», will read Stirner's book, which tells us how its author broke these chains, with feelings that go far beyond the warmth of anything else we feel in the most sublime creations and achievements of mankind.

And how little Max Stirner revealed of the passions that had churned his soul until the time when he wrote his proud book! John Henry Mackay has rescued five short works from oblivion in his booklet “Max Stirner's Minor Writings” (Berlin 1898, Schuster & Loeffler). One would like to see our cowardly contemporaries, who are so timid in all things that relate to world views and the highest interests of humanity, read this slim volume and read it again and again. If they can only overcome their shame at how small their intellectual dwarfs appear in comparison to the intellectual giants of this great man, then they can benefit greatly from the book.

I do not want to say anything about the content of the book here. Because those who do not read such things do not deserve to learn about their content second-hand. But I would like to say how the book affected me.

In his “Der Einzige und sein Eigentum” Stirner appeared to me as a perfect man. How did this man rise to such heights? I see him growing as I read the five essays that Mackay has published.

I see Max Stirner's passionate struggle.

“The Untrue Principle of Our Education, or Humanism and Realism” is the first of the essays. It was published by Stirner in the “Rheinische Zeitung” in April 1842. A piece of the man's inner life has found words in this essay. I will not say that our wise educational and teaching reformers should sit down for a few hours – they would probably need much longer – and study the essay. For they could learn more from it than from the impotent negotiations that our schoolmen conduct today with the expenditure of all their mental power. But I will say that this essay characterizes Stirner's entire world view in a unique way.

The philosophers of all times wanted impersonal knowledge. Knowledge that would reveal to them the powers that hold the world together at its core. They lustfully demanded such “science”. The world is there, they said. It is lawful. We are driven to explore the laws by which an objective power has formed it. And when they had then “honestly” researched what “holds the world together at its core”, the philosophers felt as blissful as when the bride has given her hand in marriage to the bridegroom. For - as Nietzsche says - truth is a woman. Stirner is not a suitor; he is a conqueror. He overcomes truth. He digests it. And it does not become a philosophy or a world view that he communicates to us. It becomes personality. Knowledge is no longer something that people receive from the outside, suffering; it becomes flesh and blood in them. They no longer merely perceive the laws of the world: they represent them themselves. They now want what their predecessors merely knew. The essay that proclaims this ends with the words: “The necessary decline of the will-less science and the rise of the self-conscious will, which is perfected in the sun-glow of the free personality, could be summarized as follows: Knowledge must die in order to resurrect as will, and to create itself anew as a free person every day.”

In this essay, Stirner answers the question of how knowledge can become personal, how that which one recognizes through thinking can pass into the power of the personal will. How one can become the Lord of truth from the world's ruler, from the priest of truth, was the question for him.

I will not go into the other essays by Stirner. I will merely advise the clever weekly magazine writers, who are masters of the pen but have little control over reason, to read a few pages of the book that Mackay has now published before they write their ridiculously boundless sentences about Stirner in the beautiful alliance with Bismarck and the agrarians. The “Ego and his Own” is a little too heavy for such henchmen of the Farmers' League, even if they manage to get into questionable collision with the paragraph on lèse-majesté. But the preliminary stages that gradually led Stirner to his life's work, they could perhaps still climb. And if they then economically hold together the little nerve strength that they still have, then perhaps they could defend themselves just as manfully against their accusers as Stirner did in the “Replies” to his main work, which were also published by Mackay, and not have to call upon “the aged officers who have been pensioned off”, Prince Bismarck, Mr. von Stumm, Mr. Bronsart von Schellendorf and the “crowned cousins” etc. as chief witnesses for their insignificant assertions. But I am a fool to remember the German leading article writers of weekly newspapers when considering Stirner. My kindred spirit Mackay will forgive me for that. What can I do about it if a croaky rooster crows outside while Konrad Ansorge plays the most sublime piano composition for me.

When a person has laid aside his body, a time of purification begins for him on the astral plane. The desires, cravings and passions follow him, but he lacks the tools - tongue, palate and so on - to satisfy them. This state can be compared [with] the increase of burning thirst until [the person] gets out of the habit of satisfying his desires.

Man must seek the spiritual during his lifetime [-, that,] which shines through the sensual pleasures. On the other hand, it is wrong to despise the physical life. It has its great task in the sensual world. Without senses, we could not experience the beauty of nature, the processes of life, the relationships of love and friendship that flow from person to person, which spirits could not do without. The physical-sensual life is a necessary point of transition in our development and should not be confused with a sensualistic asceticism. We only have to give up the pleasures that the ego wants for its own sake. It is necessary to enjoy food. What is to be frowned upon is the desire for pleasure for the sake of pleasure, which plunges the human being deeper into the material world.

The stay in Kamaloka lasts on average a third of the lifetime, counting backwards from death to birth, so three times as fast as in the physical life.

At this level, we see everything as in a mirror image. The sight is confusing because, for example, numbers appear upside down. Indeed, the chicken eventually disappears into the egg. Human passions are reflected there as animal images, all selfish urges as monsters or snakes. There are enough people in physical life who can see such animal images because the spiritual life is seeking a way out due to the prevalence of materialism. To reach devachan, a person must truly become like a child and discard everything that is selfish. This is the reason for the words of Jesus Christ: “Unless you become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.”

All the religious scriptures gradually reveal their true meaning to us in a theosophical way. Kamaloka is the place of effects. Man is exposed to all that to which he gave rise. If, in the course of time, he has given another a blow and he returns to that time, he feels the pain of the other, he crawls into his soul, as it were. He must experience the consequences of exaggerating selfishness as well as his good deeds.

The spiritual world is a permeable sphere and is not limited to three dimensions, but to four and more. The laws of this space require that two or a thousand things, which do not need to be spatially together, for example, are located on another continent, find themselves united here as mirror images through the wishful thinking.

When the soul sheds the etheric body, it has the sensation of expansion into the immeasurable.

The repercussions of all events in the place of purification remain as a mark, as a feeling that desires and so on are obstacles to development. The essence in the etheric body, the desire to balance everything, goes as an overall desire on the further pilgrimage.

Just as there is land, sea, air and fire in the physical world, so it is in the world that man reaches after his time of purification.

In Devachan, physical things appear in a spiritual way as a foundation, as land. Just as one walks on rocks here, one walks on archetypes there. Let us think of a rock crystal; in Devachan it appears as a black cavity, with glowing masses around it. The flowing light is the blood in the spiritual. In the case of plants, one will see their etheric body in the hollow space. The radiations around a red rose blossom, for example, would be yellowish, those of the stem would be peach-red. Light radiates around the objects, and inside is the etheric body; in the case of animals, the astral body is also present. The blood vessel system and the like can be clearly recognized. As rocks are on earth, so are the beings who are here in the physical body in Devachan as archetypes; they are there the skeleton.

As the sea and rivers, like human blood, the flowing, flooding life appears, which on earth is distributed into individual organisms.

What feels on the earthly world appears there as clouds and lightning; a battle as a thunderstorm, when passions clash on earth. All emotional upheavals, joy and pain appear as wonderful atmospheric effects. An all-pervading warmth can be perceived. Warmth is not just a state, but a force. There are four states to be distinguished:

1. The earth is solid, like the archetypes in Devachan.
2. Water is liquid; in occult terms, however, everything that is liquid, including mercury, is considered water; in Devachan it is the flowing life.
3. Air is gaseous; comparable to the sensations whose precipitation we see in Devachan.
4. Heat is the fire of Devachan. When a body gets warmer, it has also become softer.

In the air circle of Devachan, the harmony of the spheres can be heard; pleasure and pain become sounds.

The fire region becomes sound that expresses the inner meaning. Everything has a name. There is a true name for every thing. In this region, the essence of a being resounds; they express themselves. Here at the fire region of the word is an important boundary. Those who are clairvoyant or in a post-mortem state can see the Akasha Chronicle shining from higher regions. A record remains of everything that happens. The power of the spiritual remains in the spiritual, this is almost indestructible. The Akasha image remains; the mortal, the related matter disappears. To interpret the images correctly, a strong sense of orientation is needed. An example: let us think of Goethe at the end of the eighteenth century and look at the relevant image in the Akasha Chronicle. We want an explanation about Faust. The image can provide an answer in terms of the spirit that Goethe had at the time. The images have an inner life without being the subject.

Just as the stars shine through, so does the Budhi plane shine through the astral plane. Here man has shed his astral corpse and has a significant experience. He sees his physical body and has the feeling: “That's you!” the core of Indian Vedanta philosophy.

It's important for a modern to be aware of what he's doing and what changes in him when he takes up an esoteric life.

We've often heard that two paths take us into spiritual worlds; one of them is when a man descends deep within him to find a connection with God; the other is when he tries to go out into the macrocosm. We have the forces in us that we seek, that created us; we look for them because we don't recognize them and not because we don't have them. In theosophy we learn about both paths that are supposed to balance each other, for a modern is no longer suited to go on one path alone Each path has its dangers, that we'll discuss later, and they're both very difficult. We treat the inner path in our meditations in inspiration, and the outer one through a thorough study of theosophical teachings about world evolution in imagination. This study develops our intellect and also influences our feelings, and after years of thorough study of these ideas, we'll notice that we've become different human beings. Theosophy works on men whether they bring a receptivity for it with them or not. Moderns are divided into two groups—those who seek theosophy because it gives them what they were striving for and those who don't know what to do with it and are opposed to it. Since November, 1879, a few men have become mature enough to take in theosophical teachings, but it's only a small host, whereas other moderns are till unable to acquire the teachings, consider them to be fantastic ideas and dreams or even get angry about them.

When people who prove to be receptive for theosophical teachings let the latter work upon them, their etheric body begins to oscillate slightly. Whereas someone who loses himself in external things gets an expanded and rarified etheric body. When such a person hears some spiritual teachings it's as if the wind were blowing through a cleft in the etheric body, which announced itself in him as fear, but appears outwardly as doubt. Such a man only notices the doubts, but they're the expression of fear and anxiety that have moved into his rarified etheric body as into a vacuum and have become noticeable there as doubt. We can't help a man who behaves in a rejective manner. It's better not to bother him with theosophy But wherever an opportunity rises we should quietly let theosophical ideas flow in according to the principle “steady dripping hollows the tone.” For we only have another 400 years or so to give these teachings in a theosophical form to all men. So that everyone will have an opportunity those who resisted them now will be born again in the next four centuries. A suitable number of men must be present then who represent theosophy in the right way.

Men could only tread the inner path for a long time before the event of Golgotha. Men who went out into the macrocosm in ancient India would have become lost in it as in darkness and emptiness, because their inner members had a different relationship to each other then. This kind of union with God existed until medieval times, because man changes but slowly. Mystics like Eckhart, Tauler and Molinos teach us the inner path an describe it exactly. Miguel de Molinos speaks of five stages of immersion He says that we must turn away from all creatures that corresponds to the forces of our etheric body, from our talents that correspond to the astral body, and from our ego that coincides with our fourth part and that we must merge with God.

But it gradually became necessary for men to tread the inner and outer paths simultaneously, and that's why the Rosicrucian, esoteric schools that taught both ways rose in the 11^th and 12^th centuries.

The writer of the Apocalypse points to the outer path for the first time. He shows us that we must become entirely separated from our personality to treat it. In a modest way he says that he was caught up by the spirit on Patmos Island. This has a particular meaning. In order to tread this outer path or to find the union with the divine in the macrocosm one must choose a firm point from which one concentrates oneself. So John the theologian calculated the stars' position on September 30, 395 A.D. and he had his visions from this point. On that day the sun stood before the Virgo sign and the moon was under her feet. We showed this picture on one of the seven seals. One can also calculate this time exoterically. Scholars have done this and have concluded that John Chrysostum wrote the Apocalypse around this time. But in reality we're touching upon a great secret here, for of course the Apocalypse arose much earlier, and its writer only moved himself ahead into the year 395.

Both paths have dangers for which an esoteric must watch. One who takes in theosophical teachings is attacked by many doubts; that's only natural and better than accepting things on faith. Of course he must eliminate these doubts and this will make him stronger.

A second danger into which an esoteric can get on this outer path is instability. One who has studied world evolution seriously will have felt that intense interests that he had previously disappear and that he doesn't have a firm hold on anything earthy. The danger here is that one's instability is disguised in the form of a high ideal that one is striving towards or a mission that one has to fulfill. But if we see through this and recognize it as a disguised instability we'll make rapid progress on the right path.

In descents into our interior two dangers threaten us. We can have a certain sensual pleasure, a comfortable feeling from the divine through the immersion in us and can thereby fall prey to a fine egotism, so that we turn away from everything that surrounds us and that should still interest.

The second danger is that a man can take what approaches him on immersion into himself to be spiritual revelations, when they may just be his own feelings.

Medieval mystics didn't have theosophical teachings yet. We don't find the latter anywhere in them. Their union with the divine is like a Neo-Buddhism. They didn't need the outer path yet.

Mystics also use the saying In Christo morimur in the form: In Christ we live.

My dear sisters and brothers! We should realize that there's a big difference between outer, exoteric knowledge and the knowledge that theosophy gives us. When we let an outer perception work on us, ideas and concepts form in us; we get to know the thing we're looking at; thereby, we know something about it. Are things the same with theosophical knowledge? We also form concepts and ideas about man's four members, the earth's planetary conditions or the Akashic rcord when we're told about them, but there's something else connected with this. Whereas exoteric knowledge doesn't enrich us or leave anything behind after death, the same cannot be said about esoteric knowledge. It flows into our astral body and forms certain new members there; new threads become woven into the astral body and remain connected with our being.

We know that a man's astral body surrounds him in an egg form. Since an ego is working in it, it radiates. New threads and knowledge are woven in there, so that we can call it the “cognition body.” This knowledge body will become ever denser and stronger and will eventually be spirit self. Another planetary evolution of the earth is only possible through the fact that we develop it. On Jupiter this cognition body will be as dense as our astral body, on Venus as our etheric body, and on Vulcan it'll have become about as physical as our blood.

Now through what can this theosophical knowledge become so fruitful that the cognition body develops in the astral body? Let's clarify this through an example.

We're surrounded by physical, material air. We inhale it. That's how we live. In the bible we hear: God blew living breath into man, and he became a living soul. But the carbonic acid we exhale can't maintain life, it's lethal air. Death began because we were released from the lap of the Gods. Man ate from the tree of knowledge, that is, he had acquired his freedom and independence with Lucifer's help. That's why he was driven from paradise, that is, he's become a water man and then an earth man, and he's not an air man anymore as in the Lemurian epoch. Lucifer will have power over him as long as he's on earth. But the tragic thing about this being is that Lucifer's power doesn't extend beyond the earth. All pain and suffering arise through Lucifer and are connected with this tragedy.

There'll be no exoteric knowledge on Jupiter anymore. If man had remained in paradise, he would also have eaten of the tree of life. The latter was kept away from him through Lucifer's influence, and thereby the possibility of sinking much lower than he did by eating from the tree of knowledge. But now the tree of life becomes transformed into the symbol that initially means earth but that conceals a life that's all the greater and that a man can attain if he acquires the cross with the red roses.

Just as the earth is enveloped by the air that men breathe, so there's a special substance in the this air that wants to flow into men. It depends on us whether we exhale this spiritual substance again as lethal air or whether we connect it with our theosophical knowledge and weave the product into our astral body. This is important for the whole cosmos and not just for us. If we inhale this spiritual substance without making it productive in us, we take something from the cosmos but give it nothing in return and thereby prevent evolution. Whether the Jupiter condition can follow the earth condition depends on whether we increase these spiritual forces around the earth.

If we look at old Saturn we know that the first germ of our physical body arose there. It arose from Gods' thoughts, which condensed to what we are today. But on Saturn it was already counted upon that men would continue the work of the Gods, and we do this when we let the spiritual substance around us flow into us, to build up our cognition body from it.

It was the purpose of the Mystery of Golgotha to give men this opportunity. What is it that we take in with this spiritual substance? It's the Christ himself. This wasn't the case before the Mystery of Golgotha. Then men could say, Ex Deo nascimur. At that time candidates for initiation were prepared in such a way that they went back to what was handed down by the old Gods. But we know that with the Mystery of Golgotha the aura of our earth has changed, because Christ has become the spirit of our earth. He has poured himself substantially into this earth aura and is contained in it since then. Now is the point in time when this poured out Christ substance has become condensed, so that it can be taken in by men. Therefore: In Christo morimur means nothing else than to immerse oneself in this spiritual substance and to take in Christ completely with it, so that one can say: Not I, But Christ in me.

But one shouldn't forget that a light is always surrounded by a lot of shadows. Many errors will also creep in with the new wise things that have been given to our age, and so it's our holy duty to check every thing we hear with our healthy human intellect. This has always been emphasized in all Rosicrucian esotericism. But we should be tolerant towards people who make mistakes here, and we should always tell ourselves: if what we have is really the truth, it'll remain true by itself. If it's an error, I'll be sure to find the truth in my next incarnation through my fervent search for it.

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.

Last time we said that everything in the outer world is maya and that practically everything must be thought of in reverse. We emphasized that an esoteric must learn to always look at everything around him in the way mentioned. If he sees a flower, he should think of it upside down; if he hears a sound coming from the right, he should consider that the sound is really coming from the left. He can go even further and consider the same thing in other cases. Where it's dark, he should tell himself that it's really bright, and where it's light, it's really dark. If we anchor this feeling of the inversion of outer maya in us, if all of our thinking is guided by this, then we'll experience great transformations in us that lead us to the truth. But if we want to make all of this clear to ourselves through mere reflection, we're led into great dangers. An esoteric knows that all symbols and esoteric teachings can be a little dangerous if they're wrongly understood and applied, but we esoterics aren't little children. One who has tried to apply what was said here the last time will have gotten the feeling as if the ground were being pulled out from under his feet. And when one tries to understand these things intellectually, it's as if two mirrors were set up facing each other, so that a reflection repeating itself endlessly arises. Then the danger is that the intellect would dance along with this endless repetition as if in a whirling dance. The healthy human intellect then says to itself: My understanding stands still on me here. Only an unhealthy soul lie lets itself be pulled into the whirling dance.

But we can also go further with the inversion and include human beings. Let's imagine a human face that has lighter or darker colors, with lighter or darker hair, and now let's imagine a bright face as dark, dark hair as light, and so on. Also we should imagine hollows where the face protrudes and bulges where it recedes. The skin's color also changes; think dark green where it's rosy and light green where it's dark red. If we could feel this, we'd be able to know the inner nature of this man. For instance, a light green color would show us that we have to do with someone who stands strongly in the life that works in the three lower kingdoms of nature. When the color appears to be dark green, he would be more inclined toward spiritual things. And where one sees blue, the highest spiritual qualities would become manifest in this human being. But if we would first imagine the color and then transfer it in thought to the face that's before us, we'd go far astray.

Another thing that we must imagine is that something that looks ugly is really beautiful. That's why in old paintings Christ on the cross wasn't made beautiful but often ugly and distorted.

An esoteric who's always talking about his difficulties and physical pains, who makes a daily account of all the great and small pains that he must endure is a weak esoteric. One who wants to get ahead must develop the strength in himself to not want to be constantly cured of all his ailments through medicines and baths; he must realize that all of this belongs to esoteric training, in which man's whole being undergoes a change. If someone goes over a meadow and sees an autumn crocus it would be an example of a rather sick soul life if he thinks that it wants to devour him. But in an esoteric who isn't sick, it can happen that he has the feeling that he's being grabbed from behind by higher beings and being sucked up, as it were. One sometimes finds a man who's afraid of an upper story window because he gets a desire to jump out of it. Or there's the fear of open places, where a man doesn't dare to go through one. This feeling stops if there's someone with him. Official medicine gives causes for these phenomena, but the real reason is that such a person lacks justified solitude. All men need to be alone to a certain extent, and this is not just egoism. Someone who always wants to help others will at some point feel that he can't help anymore if he doesn't get the forces for this out of solitude. One who always wants to talk will someday sense that his words are empty if he doesn't let spiritual forces come to him in solitude. We must be alone for prayer and meditation; communal prayer can only bring men to a certain groupsouledness. One who thinks that it's egotistical to go into solitude simply feels the need to be with other people, not to help them. A supposedly selfless wish to help can really come from egoism, where one simply seeks sociability. For instance, the magnetic healing that's used to lessen others' pain could just come from the need to have a pleasant feeling from stoking someone's body. Although love and egoism are opposite poles, it's nevertheless true that in certain boundary cases they come very close to each other and it's difficult to tell them apart.

We're given strength through out ego-consciousness so that we're not sucked up by higher beings entirely, so that we don't become puppets, but higher development gets us to make ourselves independent in our feelings, otherwise we would lose our self-consciousness completely. We're supposed to consciously develop ourselves up to the higher hierarchies.

One who through his study of theosophy has grasped the great truths about world and man in such a way that they ensoul him and go warmly through him will learn to feel himself in the midst of spiritual beings in such a way that he's in no danger of losing his independent existence. In everything that may happen to us we learn to say from within: That comes from God. In suffering, we learn to say: God is sending us this suffering as a loving reminder of our past mistakes. And we'll happily say: That's a blessing that God is sending us—and it makes us thankful and not conceited. We then learn to see the working of divine powers in all events, and we'll gradually feel that we have the right relation to the cosmos.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the spirit lay the germ of my body.
And the spirit has imprinted in my body
The eyes of sense,
That through them I may see
The lights of bodies.
And the spirit has imprinted in my body
Reason and sensation
And feeling and will,
That through them I may perceive bodies
And act upon them.
In the spirit lay the germ of my body.
In my body lies the germ of the spirit.
And I will incorporate into my spirit
The super-sensible eyes
That through them I may behold the light of spirits.
And I will imprint in my spirit
Wisdom and power and love,
So that through me the spirits may act
And I become a self-conscious organ
Of their deeds.
In my body lies the germ of the spirit.

Record A by Unknown

The four elements correspond to the four bodies of man in the manner described above. With the high sun spirits, the order is reversed. The blaze of desire, the highest of the four lower bodies of the sun spirits, is not the same as the state that man undergoes in Kamaloka, but their blaze of desire is directed towards the highest and purest.

These sun spirits emerged from the earth (plus moon) with the sun because human development would otherwise have become

so fast in 1908 that man would have been consumed; he could not yet endure fire and air at that time.

The etheric body of the human being corresponds to water; it has built up the glandular system, the reproductive organs, and the digestive organs of the human being. The astral body of the human being created the nervous system within him.

During the Atlantean times, the sun spirits did not work in the human being at night as they do today. When a person sleeps today, the sun spirits work in his physical body through the embers of desire.

The highest of the sun spirits is the Christ. He prepared the disciples he needed to prepare humanity for his coming. The seven Rishis, mighty entities who, so to speak, sat around the table of the Christ, guided humanity from the Atlantean into the Aryan basic race and the Indian sub-race. Outwardly, they were simple men. Each of them was initiated into the mysteries of one of the seven planets.

One disciple whom the Christ himself had trained was Zarathustra in the Persian race. He saw in the mighty aura of the Christ what he had experienced. He could not reach the Christ himself. He called it Auramazdao, Ormuzd. He saw the mighty battle of the evil beings against the power of the Christ and their defeat.

He had two main disciples who carried his knowledge forward for the benefit of human development. One was Hermes, who founded Egyptian wisdom, and the other was Moses, to whom the Christ, the “I am,” appeared in the burning bush. They were all forerunners of the Christ. Buddha was also one of them and, so to speak, sat at the Round Table of the Christ. He also foretold us of Him until He could appear in the flesh.

When the sun went out the earth, not all its power was lost to mankind. It continued to work from outside and through the moon, which gets its light from the sun. When Yahweh appeared in the burning bush, he appeared as the bearer of the power of Christ.

The forces of the Christ-Sun have been active throughout the ages, most strongly around the time we call Christmas time. On the night of the winter solstice, those who were intensively engaged with these things could ascend to these forces, to union with the Christ. Since the event at Golgotha, it is also possible to do this by completely surrendering to the impression of this event. Then one has mystical moments when one can penetrate and the Christ comes to meet one in the night. It does not have to be Christmas Eve, but any of the nights around then.

Record B by Camilla Wandrey

When the sun and the earth separated, a downward development began for man to the physical body, but for the exalted sun beings it was an upward development. And that which corresponds to what our physical body is for them is light for them: light is their garment, that is, their body. We write “I” for the human being.

It is written in reverse. Why, that emerges from meditation on it. The high beings of the sun did not separate from our earth at that time, they always influenced everything that happened on earth. They work in light and warmth. Their ruler, the highest being of the sun, the Christ, has always been working.

In ancient Indian culture: the seven holy Rishis were simple people, but when they were in an inspired state, the planetary spirits spoke through them, each through one of the Rishis. Moon, Mars, Mercury, Venus and also the high sun spirit, the Christ. Zarathustra spoke of Ahura Mazdao or the [illegible], that was the Christ, and he taught his disciples. He had two disciples: Hermes and Moses, and to the latter the Christ later appeared in the elements of the earth, in the burning bush and lightning fire of Sinai, for the Yahweh deity is none other than the reflected Christ deity.

Then the Christ-God Himself appeared on Earth and dwelt in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, and a new impulse came into the development of the Earth.

During sleep, the I and the astral body leave the physical body. During sleep, the physical and etheric bodies are nourished by the higher beings of the sun, and in such a way that what is the burning desire of the higher beings of the sun is absorbed. In Atlantean times, this covering of the physical body with the beings of the sun could only take place on one single night during the year; and this night was Christmas night. This gradually disappeared. Through the impulse of Christ, and in accordance with the Mystery of Golgotha, this covering can again take place during the nights around Christmas time and on Christmas Eve itself, but only if the person has prepared for it through meditation. Dating Lessons

Notes taken by Günther Wagner or Martina Limburger-von Hoffmann

What we want to consider as an aid on the occult path during this meeting today is entirely the responsibility of those whom we call the “Sages of the East”. The words that are to be spoken are to be understood as an inspiration from this side. Let us dwell for a moment on what we call self-knowledge, not that self-knowledge which man imagines he finds by constantly brooding over himself, but self-knowledge which is of the greatest importance for esoteric striving, in order to make meditation and concentration effective and fruitful in our soul.

When we enter into the sacred moments of meditation in the right way, it is comparable to touching the string of a musical instrument in our soul, holding on to it for a while and then letting it fade away slowly, so that the reverberation remains in it for a long time. But that is not all that must happen if we want to achieve a far-reaching effect. We must try to hollow out our soul completely, to empty it of all impressions, even of the effect of meditation. Then you will notice, though only after a long, long time, but after the appropriate time you will notice that you are getting closer and closer to the spiritual worlds, which you have already sensed and felt before, that you feel them with greater certainty, even if the clairvoyant eye cannot see them.

The souls that are now embodied in physical bodies were together for a time between death and new birth with the souls of those who lived in the sixth, seventh, or eighth century after the appearance of Christ Jesus on earth, and also with the souls of those who were contemporaries of Christ Jesus.

Now, the Christ impulse has come into the world to tear humanity out of the selfishness into which it had gradually fallen, and it had to come so that people would not become completely hardened in their own egos. But He could not work as would have been necessary, for He came at a time when egotism was at its strongest on earth, and even today He is only at the beginning of His actual mission.

The bond that is to entwine soul to soul must first be woven little by little. The spiritual science points out the right way in which true brotherly love must develop in future times.

Now, through the reception of the Christ Impulse in the souls at this particular time, a very peculiar religiosity arose, which has been preserved until our time. People involve the Christ so completely in their egotism because they only strive to be saved themselves, to secure a place for themselves in heaven. What must I do to be saved? They did not realize, and still do not realize, that this is an expression of a greater selfishness than when one person begrudges another his possessions and tries to snatch them away from him.

Now the souls that were re-embodied today, at least for the most part, were also still together with other souls during their stay in the devachan state. They were still together with the souls of those who had descended in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, who had implemented this egoism, which they brought with them into this embodiment, so that they considered only their own opinion to be the right one, only wanted to accept it, which had caused the great religious disputes, Calvin, Luther and so on. With these souls we were together between death and new birth. To know this is of the greatest importance, for only by knowing all these facts can one arrive at true self-knowledge, which is so necessary for progress on the occult path.

The Mystery at Golgotha is indeed the greatest sacrifice that has been made for humanity for its release from the bonds of selfishness, but it is by no means the only one. At all times there have been individuals who descended to Earth, worked there for a time and then sacrificed their three veils for the good of humanity. There have always been such individuals. They were, as it were, forerunners of the Mystery of Golgotha; the most powerful sacrifice of all times was that of John, the forerunner of Christ Jesus on earth.

Such a sacrifice of the three veils leaves a powerful impression in the spiritual atmosphere in which it took place for a long, long time. Such an event took place many, many years ago in southern Europe. When I was in Palermo in Sicily some time ago to give a lecture, I noticed the peculiar atmosphere, the spiritual atmosphere that prevailed there, and the occult research revealed that such a sacrifice had taken place there. There really lived an individuality there, and it worked among people in such a way that it then sacrificed its covers for them. It was Empedocles who, after he had completed his work as a philosopher and statesman, left his three sheaths and plunged into Mount Etna.

By becoming aware of all these facts that have come before our soul today, we will take a step forward towards true self-knowledge.