The Rudolf Steiner Archive

In order to get ahead in our esoteric life we must become more attentive to things that usually escape our everyday consciousness. We must also revise our ideas about what we'll experience. For instance we complain that thoughts storm into our meditation that bother and disturb us. If we would think about it we would see that it's progress that we've become more sensitive, because we notice that these thoughts are stronger than we are. They induce us to use more strength in our meditation, for it's luciferic beings who bring up our own thoughts in us. Luciferic beings are always in us, but they're drowned out by the surging of everyday life. When we walk through a quiet woods at night we'll hear the leaves falling, animals flitting by and distant footsteps, but in a city's bustle such quiet noises will be imperceptible.

That's how things are with our meditation also. The quiet that we create let's us notice what submerges in the everyday hubbub. All kinds of things can enter our consciousness, such as physical pains that we don't feel otherwise. We can concentrate on our body—although this is only a good idea in special cases—and look for all of its pains. One begins somewhat over the head, excludes all other thoughts and concentrates on this one point. Then one goes further down, focuses on one part of the brain, and so on. Here one will notice that one can have pains in various parts of the body. The more egotistical a man is the more distinctly he'll feel pains here and there. But we shouldn't get hypochondriacal or scared about this—we should stay cool. We also have to do this with other things, for strange and surprising things can happen to us, but we have to get to the bottom of them. The relation between members of our being changes through meditation. Even when we do it ever so badly and awkwardly we nevertheless pull the ego, astral body and part of the etheric body out of the physical body, and so we can have strange experiences in our etheric body in the moments after meditation. This body is a faithful preserver of everything we encountered in life, consciously or not. For instance as a child we may have experienced that a dog was run over by a train. Over the years we have overcome the horrible scene. But the etheric body preserved it and through our development 30 or 40 years later we can suddenly perceive the yelping and whimpering out of us, or it can even be the case that the person concerned can make yelping sounds himself and then of course is rather scared about this. This happens when the etheric body is loosened in development, appears suddenly with especially strong force and works on the physical body.

Another example: An esoteric can have pains from an inflammation of the middle ear that lead to visions of a gruesome scene, and he can't explain its origin. This comes about as follows. Pains are seated in the astral body and not in the physical body. We know that the astral body can experience great pain in kamaloca. These pains in the astral body are reflected in the etheric body. The esoteric experiences the vibrations that are generated in the etheric body thereby, but also vibrations of a similar kind that were generated in it during childhood through soul pains, when he experienced the horrible scene. He had forgotten the latter long ago, but the experience emerges from the etheric body through his esoteric training and the outer earache.

Something even stranger is possible. Say we live on the other side of a house's wall with a family that liked to read and tell tall tales. Our physical ear didn't hear them, but our etheric body took them in. And in spiritual development it can happen that we experience them in our etheric body. Such things can scare us if we don't understand them. Say that someone goes to sleep in a public lecture through lack of interest. His ego and astral body are nevertheless there. Then when he wakes up it may happen that the physical body does not want to adapt itself to what the ego and astral body took in. Thereby the person is dissatisfied with himself, reproaches himself severely or even feels pain from his physical body. Or it may happen that someone takes in esoteric teachings with great attentiveness and does his exercises well, but he has to be among people who reject theosophy and esotericism either silently or openly. This has an effect on the esoteric, and it can happen after meditation that voices within him say: “That's all nonsense” or much more terrible things that give him great pain. It's the thoughts of his environment that he may not have heard with physical ears but with which he's obsessed. When we lift out the ego we take all of our good qualities with us and refine them more and more; the bad qualities we push down and they acquire a kind of independent life. Then it may happen that we begin to scold and to use expressions that we're too well trained to use in ordinary life. This then fills us with amazement and horror, and we may tell ourselves: I'm not like that at all, I'm too decent a person for that. But we should, admit that we are like that, for such things only disappear when we finally put them aside. And yet all of these experiences are steps forward, and it's just a matter of knowing their significance. It's especially important to realize that it's our own fault that it's so hard for us to press into spiritual worlds. But when we get up there we meet the one who took our sins upon him through the Mystery of Golgotha. He took our weaknesses upon him; that's a true word in the Bible, as everything in the Bible is true. And one who refuses to have his sins expiated by the Christ hasn't pressed to the depth of this truth, just as little as one who believes in it as a “good Christian” but who thinks that the matter is very simple. World evolution is very complicated and hides riddles in every little thing, and every little thing can become a whole world. The example of otitis media can teach us this. What is experienced there in the etheric body arose like a world out of a small thing.

Inspirations for the material world can also come from higher worlds. A thing that's noted too little, that many people read over when they read the life of Darwin's friend Wallace is that a thought that led to one of the most important discoveries in connection with physical heredity came to him in a feverish dream. That this thought came to him in a condition in which his physical brain was unsuited for thinking should give the materialists who consider thinking to be a function of the brain much to think about. Darwin also travelled a lot in the tropics and it's quite possible that he made some discoveries about physical conditions in a fever.

One will only notice such things when things are found in such abnormal states, as if through inspiration that can be used materialistically, when for instance someone discovers something that can make him rich. Up till then one will consider all such things to be figments of a sick fantasy. Let's continue our meditation with industry, perseverance and energy, for the help of the one who brought his impulse into earth evolution will always come to meet us. This help is always there.

There would be no esotericism if the view that medieval soul investigators had and that is shared by modern psychologists were correct. Back then they said: Everything that goes on in the soul is intentional, that is, a particular intention underlies all soul processes; when I think, then my thinking has a particular content, I have to think something; when I feel, hope, imagine, will then I must feel, hope, imagine or will something. Medieval soul investigators expressed this much more clearly than modern psychologists, for our age is the age of fuzzy concepts. If this medieval view were correct no esoteric thinking would be possible, for an esoteric wants to remove this something from his soul also and make it completely empty, so that divine thinking can then stream into his soul. In a way this is also not produced by our exercises, for in them we concentrate on particular words, pictures, etc. that are given us by occult teachers. That is, on something that isn't taken from the sense world. Our soul becomes prepared to receive divine existence when it has matured through these exercises.

What's the purpose of this concentrated thinking? To divert us from the material thoughts that whiz around us and to get us to rest in a particular thought content. We must get to the point of ignoring a particular object of our thinking, of freeing ourselves completely from it and of developing the forces that are necessary for thinking. Medieval soul investigators knew that quite well, but they obeyed a rule that's still followed by many people and that's become a basic principle in all cognitional theory today. They said that it's very difficult to attain thinking, feeling and willing that is devoid of intentions, and that what's difficult is impossible for men. That's how all these ideas about limits to cognitional capacity came into philosophy.

Of course it isn't easy for an esoteric to remove all thinking, feeling and willing content from his soul during meditation and to only develop forces. He'll only attain this through steady, strenuous meditation. A meditator is really in the same position as a sleeping man, except that he keeps himself conscious.

For what happens in sleep? The astral body and ego leave the body, and the physical and etheric bodies remain lying on their resting place, but as I've often mentioned this is only correct to a certain extent. Just as the sun only sets for one part of the globe and arises anew for the other half, so only one part of the physical body rests. The sun of the astral body and ego begins to unfold its activity in the other part. For the astral body and ego are withdrawn from the nervous and blood systems, but they begin to work on the senses and glands during sleep. Many of you have gone to sleep in a room that's not very warm and have then felt cold on awaking. That's because the astral body and ego aren't in your blood and nervous system during sleep. It may seem strange, but senses are awake the most during sleep. For instance, while our eyes are closed at night the forces of the ego and astral body work into them. Whereas our eyes are really sleeping during the day when we're awake. A man wouldn't be able to use them if they weren't asleep. The fact is that the sun of the astral body and ego rises at night on the hemisphere of the sense and glandular systems. One who wakes up consciously in sleep can experience the light that works on eyes and the building up of senses that must stop in daytime so that a man can see. Such a man can see the image of an angel who's floating towards him when the lens expands and contracts again. If he could expand his gaze he would see an angel fighting with a demon, projected out of him. This imagination arises because in sleep the blood is taking care of the eyes. For generations of archangels and Gods have worked on the human eye. When one makes this clear to oneself one will also feel how irreverently physiologists are probing into what was created over a very long time by hierarchies of divine beings.

When a meditator looks at himself from outside he can have the feeling of a space that's filled with warmth only, like an oven. What lives in there is what weaves in a man's own soul life. We must feel the warmth ether that fills and surrounds the physical body. This takes a lot of attentiveness. Inexperienced esoterics won't notice this ether, they notice something quite different, namely, thoughts that storm in on them, often long forgotten images, feelings and worries press in on them. Then they come and complain. A more experienced esoteric can say: I congratulate you on the progress that you're making now.

This fits in with the word in John's Gospel, “And the light shone into the darkness, but the darkness comprehended it not.” For this warmth that's in us is darkness. Light wants to press in from outside, but it can't, because there's a battle going on between two kinds of warmth. It's hard for a man to see that there are two kinds of warmth. Once when a thunder storm was approaching an old shepherd told me: Those are two weathers that are gathering against each other. Modern physicists speak abstractly of positive and negative electricity, but that's as far as it goes. The old shepherd still felt and knew out of the depths of his soul that when a thunderstorm comes up two powers are fighting each other, that a battle is taking place there.

A modern isn't aware of two kinds of warmth anymore. It's easier for him to imagine that there are two kinds of light: the inner luciferic light and the outer divine light that he sees coming towards him in meditation. But aside from man's warmth that's luciferic there's another warmth that can irradiate him from outside, but which he'll feel to be cold in meditation to begin with. In meditation it's a good sign to feel breathed on by cold, which is warmth in spiritual worlds. If we focus on this cold we feel our own warmth like a sphere around and in us. We seem to go through a fiery oven in which everything luciferic is burned, and yet this fire of divine wrath—which is really love—is felt to be cold that's breathing on us. Once one has become aware of this happening one tells oneself: Thank God that I'm punished and tortured and have to experience God's wrath that burns up the things in me that shouldn't be in me any more.

Then warmth that's initially felt to be cold comes to us from outside. and this comes with light—which is also from Lucifer, but from Lucifer's good side. Spirits in the good hierarchies use Lucifer to let this light radiate into us.

Thereby we can arrive at a soul life that's not intentional, at a spiritual world that's not just a continuation of the physical one, but a quite different one. The rose cross can be a symbol of this for us.

People often say: The rose cross remains a mere symbol for me. But that's their own fault. The feelings with which a man should permeate himself so that the red rose cross becomes a live force and not just a symbol were already indicated in Occult Science. We can also convert what was said today into a feeling: We're born from God. But since Lucifer mixed himself into creation the cross's wood must become burnt charcoal and black. In ... morimur. If we've died in Christ like this then the world forces, the forces of the seven red heavenly roses that radiate into us as light and warmth can approach us from outside from the seven planets.

What every esoteric is heartily interested in is success for his meditative efforts. Everyone is successful, even if he doesn't notice it. Budding esoterics often complain about pains. These pains are disorders that arise in the body because the physical and etheric bodies aren't in the right contact with each other. These pains were already there before, except that the man hadn't felt them since he was coarser and more robust. He feels them now as an esoteric since he's finer and more sensitive. An esoteric must learn to bear such pains. Of course one has to know whether or not the disease should be treated.

Why is it that one knows one's physical body so little? Because one lives in it and only perceives it with one's feelings. One sees with one's eyes and so one can't observe them. Once an esoteric gets to the point where he withdraws from the physical with his soul and spirit he'll be able to observe his physical body. We're helped to do this if we concentrate our thoughts on a point as much as possible and then immerse our self in this point and live in it for awhile. A strengthening of thought power occurs through such concentration and thereby one can gradually get to the point of observing one's physical body.

Then we must become familiar with our etheric body. This is more difficult, for the etheric body does not have a skin like the physical body—it's a fine tissue that sends out its streams everywhere into the outer world and it's imprinted by everything that goes on in the outer world, often without the man's knowledge. One learns to feel the etheric body by doing the second auxiliary exercise. It's outer impressions that ordinarily drive a man to act. He sees a flower on a meadow, and he stretches out a hand to pick it because it pleases him. But as esoterics we must get to the point of doing this or that out of an impulse that we give ourselves. Then one will see that it's the etheric body that induces the hand to move. One feels that one's etheric body awakens in this way. Through this awakening etheric body one gradually learns to experience oneself in an etheric world. Every time I grab something or bump into it this is really an attack on the outer world. A non-esoteric has no inkling of this for the Guardian of the Threshold protects him from this knowledge, but an esoteric makes his etheric body increasingly independent so that it experiences itself in the etheric world. His organs get finer and he gets the feeling that spaces aren't only filled with physical objects but by countless elemental beings who make themselves noticed through bumping, pricking and burning. One must make room for oneself everywhere in this elemental, etheric world by stretching out, withdrawing, pushing, striding forwards, etc., and such movements must occur with the full consciousness that one wants to make them out of one's own being. That's the second thing: initiative actions. One without an initiative will who can't make room for himself in the etheric world can do just as little there as one who wants to dance on a stage that has chairs standing all over it. The chairs must be removed first. That's what one learns in the spiritual realm through the second exercise. We must do just the opposite to become aware of our astral body. We must hold back desires that are living in the astral body, we must develop equanimity with respect to them. We must create absolute calm in us. Only then do we feel the outer astral world bumping into our inner astral world. Just as we bump into the etheric world by reaching into it by ourselves in our will, so we feel the outer astral world by remaining quiet in ourselves, by quieting all wishes and desires. Before the astral body gets to this point it stuns itself with a cry. We know that pain arises when the physical and etheric bodies aren't in the right contact with each other. The astral body feels this as pain. A small child cries when he feels pain. He tries to drown out the pain by crying. An adult might say “ouch.” If a man could let his pain stream completely into the sound's vibrations changes would arise in the etheric body's formation through sound oscillations so that he would become unconscious and feel no pain. But the good Gods made men weaker, and that's good, otherwise there would be no pain and also no articulated speech. An esoteric must get to the point where he can bear pain and everything else that's stimulated in him from outside with equanimity. Then he won't attack the outer world, but it'll attack him. Since he has developed complete calm the attacks only touch his physical and etheric bodies, and the astral body remains untouched. It becomes free and one can observe it. So I get to know my astral body through the equanimity exercise. Finally I must also get to know my ego. I can't feel my ego, because I'm living in it. That's why we must pour it out into the world. I become familiar with my ego through what we call positivity. If we look at a rotting dog's beautiful teeth like Christ Jesus did then we don't see the ugliness, but we dive down so far into everything that we arrive at the good. Thereby we get away from our ego and can observe it. The ego is love and will. Through the developed will we get to know the substance of all things that originate in the divine world. Through love we learn to experience the essence of things. Thus through will and love we press forward to cognition that's free of the personal ego. As a spiritual ego we learn to dive down into the being and substance of all things that come from the spiritual Father ground; that includes our own ego. Our ego looks at us from all created things. The pupil attains the swan stage when he can experience that. At the fifth stage we develop spirit self or manas. There we mustn't cling to what we previously saw, heard and learned. We must learn to ignore all of that, to receive what approaches us as if we were completely emptied of previous things. Manas can only be developed if one learns to feel that everything that we acquired through our own thinking is of little value in comparison with what we can acquire when we open ourselves to the thoughts that stream in out of the cosmos that was woven by the Gods. Everything that surrounds us arose from these thoughts of the Gods. We hadn't been able to find them through our previous thinking. The things concealed them for us. Now we get an inkling of the divine that's behind everything like a hidden riddle. We begin to see how few of these riddles we had fathomed. And we find that we really have to remove everything that we've learned so far from our soul, that we must approach everything quite open-mindedly, like a child—that the divine riddles that surround us are only given to the open-mindedness of the soul. The soul must become childlike to be able to press into the kingdoms of heaven. Then hidden wisdom or manas streams towards the childlike soul like a gift of grace from the spiritual world.

A man doesn't have to go further, since he makes contact with the spiritual world through these five stages. Through continual repetition of these five exercises a harmony of interaction between the various capacities that are to be attained through them must now be produced. This is brought about by the sixth exercise.

These exercises are of the very greatest importance. A soul can find its way into spiritual worlds through them. You'll find references to these five exercises everywhere in the books and lectures. And no esoteric class would have to take place if everyone read them attentively and awakened the forces of these exercises to life in his soul. They serve as a support for the specially given exercises.

An esoteric must be very attentive even to the smallest things. He must observe everything conscientiously in a quite different way than it's done in the physical world, as soon as he approaches spiritual worlds. For things in the spiritual realm are much more subtle and fine than in the physical one. That's why an esoteric must keep on doing these exercises and repeatedly rouse himself to new efforts and observations, for otherwise he can't get insights into the spiritual world. And an esoteric must especially be patient. Many people think that after they've exercised for a short time they should then get into the spiritual world, that all portals to it will be open to them. But just consider that a significant impulse or idea takes 19 years to be inwardly well grasped and understood. If an esoteric thinks that after some exercising he'll soon be mature enough for entry into spiritual worlds, then it's as if a child who'd just learned to speak would say: It's boring to have to wait for years until I become a man. I want to be a man right away.

Another thing that one has to learn in esoteric life is truthfulness. One who hasn't already learned it in physical life will have a lot of trouble in his ascent into the spiritual world since he must leave his logical thinking and everything that's connected with the intellect behind, and he's not corrected by facts in the spiritual world as he is here in the physical world. The good Gods wanted to educate man to be truthful when they placed him in the physical world, where every lie—that is, everything that doesn't correspond to the facts—is corrected by facts. The inclination for truthfulness can only be acquired in the physical world and not in the spiritual one. Finally an esoteric must try to habitually acquire a good memory. The etheric body is the preserver of memory, but without the physical body it wouldn't be able to preserve it very well. The nerves get an impression and this must be written into the physical body. The latter is as it were the recording apparatus for what a man wants to retain. And when he wants to remember something he penetrates the physical body with the etheric body to the place where what's supposed to be remembered is inscribed, the memory picture becomes alive and the man reads it from the physical body. Students repeat something they have to memorize until it has been inscribed. Then it may happen that when they for instance learn: “There stood a castle so high and grand” ... they press it forcibly into the physical body with the help of the sounds.

Such inscribing and reading must become habitual in the sense that it becomes an inner habit to permeate all of one's deeds with attentiveness and reflection.

One can't use the physical body as a memory organ for spiritual experiences; habitual activities must replace it. We must summon the nuance of feeling that belongs to this before our soul.

The content of what flows to a meditator when he makes himself empty after a meditation—also of the meditation's influence—is a matter of merit. A meditation will never be the same twice. What flows to us will depend upon our morality, love of truth, and on how we've lived since the last meditation. If we didn't remain entirely truthful or if we've let anger or aggravation arise in us, then nothing from the spiritual world can stream into us. We get what we deserve. If we trace these things attentively we'll always find the reason why we weren't graced with the spirit in some untruth, in some surging up of anger, or the like.

As soon as one begins to meditate the etheric body contracts. An inner warmth arises thereby, for it's the warmth ether—under light, sound and life ethers—that contracts. If one then pays attention to what one has outside one, one will perceive that it's something flowing, like a kind of religious devotion, like moral warmth in the world ether. And one becomes aware that what one has in oneself is something else—like a having to be ashamed with respect to this moral world warmth. A man doesn't like this very much, he doesn't want to be ashamed, he avoids this. And so he says that he's not making any progress. He hides from himself. He can only get further here by unfolding his will nature. And if he says: I can't, it only means: I don't want to unfold my will. One should often look into and listen in holy silence to one's physical body and try to perceive what's murmuring in there. One must direct one's attentiveness entirely inwards without paying any attention to what's going on around one.

In meditation one perceives everything, everything makes an impression; however one's consciousness shouldn't be focussed on it, but should be entirely directed towards the meditation.

The consciousness soul, intellectual soul and sentient soul shouldn't be completely equated with willing, thinking and feeling, for the latter are to be found in each of the three soul members. People who are more feeling beings come to esotericism, and namely, especially those who have a religious bent. Such people usually get general ideas about the spiritual world and also Imaginations very easily. They're usually spared the things that make it difficult for men to ascend into spiritual worlds. Their worries are taken away from them by an angelic being, they're carried over the threshold by their angel. Such men can experience many beautiful things in the spiritual world, and when they speak about this we should listen well to what they tell us.

Then there's people who come to esoteric development more out of the will that's connected with emotions and passions, and this can be connected with criticism and ridicule. It's more difficult for them than for the feeling type to get into the spiritual world. When they stand before the threshold they're tortured by their passions and emotions so badly that it can become physical torture. In their meditation it's as if they were being tormented and hindered by devils. They would like to enter the spiritual world, but they don't feel that they can.

The third path through thinking is one that one can choose oneself. But very few people tread this path. One hears people say that they can't imagine what things were like during Moon evolution. But that's their own fault. A farmer would easily be able to understand Saturn, Sun and Moon evolution. People who don't understand it just don't want to accept it because they've never seen it. But even if we had never seen a child we would know that an adult couldn't be the way he is if there weren't other stages of development behind him.

Our verse Ex Deo nascimur, In Christo morimur is speaking about the Father God who has a son in Christ. It was a deep thought of Christianity to express this relation with the help of the father-son relationship. For a father can also remain without a son. It's a gift of the Father that he let the Son proceed from him. If one feels united with the Son who is the God in a man's soul one can arrive at a deeper understanding of EDN, ICM and will later also come to a realization of PSSR.

We know that everyone who's on a path of esoteric development must gradually transform his whole thinking, make it different than it is in ordinary sense life, so that he can find his way into the spiritual world. We must learn to rethink, as it were, and our whole life of feeling and perception must also become different than it had been until now. What really is our thinking in ordinary life? We're used to saying that thinking takes place in the physical body, but that's not the case. The etheric body is the real causer of our thoughts. Our physical body only has something to do with it to the extent that it's a mirror for our thoughts that reflects the picture so that we can thereby become aware of it. We can clarify this through an example. When a man looks into a mirror he has his mirror image before him, the mirror gives him the outer impression of his physical shape that is, a shadow of his outer personality. Likewise the thoughts that have their living seat in the etheric body are the reflected shadow pictures of our physical brain when we think them. What do the concentration exercises that are given us bring about? They help us to gradually loosen ourselves from the thought shadows as we concentrate and contract ourselves in our etheric body so that we can press forward to the real origin of our ideas that have their life in the etheric body. It should become ever clearer to us not only that our thoughts are shadows but that all of our percepts are really nothing, and that in reality only the spiritual world exists. A naive man says that what he perceives exists. But what is existence (Sein) really? Philosophers have tried to get behind this entity in various ways. “Sein” is really derived from sehen(seeing); it's really the past participle of “sehen.” No one can see existence in the physical world, because it rests in the spiritual world; but one only sees the spirit when one doesn't see matter. Matter is really nothing, it's enveloped by spirit which is the real thing. The following example can elucidate this. When one has a bottle of seltzer water before one can't really see the water—one sees the glittering bubbles of carbon dioxide that rise like shiny pearls. And what are these sparkling, shiny pearls? They're just empty gas bubbles filled with a substance that's much thinner than water, that's “nothing” in comparison with water. So what one sees here is nothing, whereas one doesn't see the real water in which they're resting.

Thus we must become aware that all space around us is filled with spiritual realities, beings and facts, and that there's nothing there where we perceive the world's things, nothing but a hole. When we stretch out an arm we push it through the spiritual world, but we don't feel it; we only feel resistance when our hand runs into nothing or matter. We don't really see objects in space—we only see the contours of the spiritual world that these objects bound.

We grow into the spiritual world when we've gotten to the point where we've let all the shadowiness of our thoughts and of our outer surroundings fall away. But to be able to rightly place ourselves into the new world we must transform our whole thinking through esoteric development so that we can understand and judge the things and facts of the spiritual world correctly. Because it's an entirely new world for us, but a world that's more real than the one we've known so far. We enter a world that has real things and beings in it, and we connect ourselves with it, we grow into this world. As the beings and things of this world move into us we lose our head thoughts—it's as if we had stuck our head into an anthill. Then we become aware of the elemental world. As our soul life gets stronger through thought concentration and our inner self gets increasingly separate from the physical body, the things of that world appear before our soul's eye in ever clearer Imaginations and visions. We'll see that all the thoughts we've had about good, benevolent and noble things have become transformed into Imaginations that continue to live and to give their value to the universe, and that all bad, evil and low, egotistical thoughts remain behind as waste products. This becomes something that's unproductive by itself but which becomes food for what's supposed to develop from the germ of the good. Just as the mineral soil furnishes food stuffs for plants here on the physical plane, so everything that's thought badly becomes the soil for germinating thoughts of good, true and beautiful things in the elemental world. That's the reason why an occultist can think out bad and wrong things so quickly and imagine them in thought. But he doesn't let it get further. He knows that he's only allowed to get to the point where it remains thought—he doesn't let it pass over into deed, into reality. He only lets it prepare the soil from which the germ of the good can grow.

That's what happened in the world order also, that's the way the earth's mineral kingdom arose. The Elohim thought erroneous things on old Moon—that was all right there—and the mineral kingdom on earth arose from this. Jahve-Elohim was able to create man from this dust and give him his physical sheath. But Lucifer who is now about where the Elohim were on old Moon still wants to go on doing the same thing. He can only use men for this, he can only think errors within men.

We want to develop ourselves into an organ of the spiritual world, just as we've developed our physical eyes into organs for sunlight. The germ for it lay in us, and we also have a germ for that spiritual development in us that we can only unfold through strict self-training. Various means are indicated in How Does One Attain Knowledge Of Higher Worlds? to really free ourselves from the physical body through concentration and so on, so that through this splitting of one's nature one can cross the threshold of the spiritual world and behold spiritual reality. The following verses express the position one has to take with respect to the physical world and to this new spiritual world. They can be meditated in any way by people who've already received a verse to meditate on; one who doesn't have such can meditate the first verse in the morning, the second in the evening and the third verse should only be meditated occasionally to check the extent to which one has attained what was striven for in the first two strophes.

To things I turn myself
I turn myself with ray senses;—
Sense existence, you deceive me!—
What flees existence as nothing:
For you it's existence and reality;
May what must seem like nothing to you
Be disclosed to my inner life.—

(I must attain this: it's the taking of a position towards the new, outer world.)

Spirit light warm me
Let me feel myself volitionally in you.
Well thought, truly known things
How does shining I experience you
May weaving of error, badly thought things
Show itself to shining soul
That I may be weaving in myself.

(That's a questioning and experiencing in the new existence within.)

Shining I and luminous soul (- oneself -)
Floats over real developing being
What was thought, what was known
Now becomes dense spirit existence
And what seems like existence to the senses
Lives in the ocean of divine reality
Like aery existential bubbles.

(In anticipation of truth. It's a guessing, a feeling of the new self.)

When elaborated each of these strophes contains the same thing that's successively compressed in our rosicrucian verse in the ten words: Ex Deo nascimur, In Christo morimur, Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus

It has often been emphasized that one must distinguish between progress in esoteric development and noticing the progress. Every esoteric gets ahead if he does his esoteric exercises faithfully and regularly, even if he's dissatisfied with the success of the same. Honest endeavour is the important thing. We actually become different men through these exercises. This definitely happens even if we don't notice it. For the forces that loosen the etheric body and pull it out of the physical body are in all of these exercises, whether they're given orally or in books. But it's another matter to also notice these changes. A soul may actually have organs already, but it makes a difference whether it's sleeping or waking in its spiritual surroundings. It requires a strong force and preparation to wake up and become conscious. That's why descriptions are given in these lectures of what a soul experiences on waking up in the spiritual world. Many make it difficult for themselves to become conscious because they keep on thinking that the spirit land is like a second physical world, only finer and more diffuse. This is a big hindrance, because then they don't notice the fine symptoms of awaking. Such prejudices must be eliminated. One who still has them is like a man who goes up in a balloon and thinks that he can get out up there at any time and rest on a mountain top. But one who takes in esoteric explanations rightly can understand how the spiritual world is experienced when the soul awakens. To get to this point one has to ask oneself the question: What is thinking really? What thinks in me? A materialist who denies the existence of the spiritual world says: The body, the brain thinks. But one should ask him: Have you ever perceived thinking with your senses? Of course he hasn't. No one has ever heard or seen or felt thinking as warmth or the like. Therefore it's not corporeal. For what belongs to the body is sense perceptible. And so thinking is super-sensible. So the materialist would either have to accept the spiritual world or he should give up thinking because it's an absurdity—which might even be good. So we're always in the super-sensible world with our thinking, but in such a way that we don't experience it. With man's thinking it's as if someone went out to sea but didn't see himself and his boat. We don't experience it directly, for the thoughts we experience are reflections of thinking in the body. Just as someone facing a mirror sees his reflection, so a thinking soul sees the mirror image of its thinking. The brain is a mirror.

Through esoteric training a man is supposed to experience thinking and not just thoughts. Just as someone standing before a mirror sees the mirror's reflecting surface when he steps to one side, so the soul must learn to look upon the body as a reflecting apparatus. Then the man knows how thoughts come into being, and he experiences himself in the world from which thinking projects into the sense world as thought. All of this can be understood by every healthy intellect. And it's important for a theosophist to make it quite clear to himself to be armed against the objection that theosophy is based on belief, that one must believe in the existence of the super-sensible world. That's not true. Everyone can understand this existence if he uses his thinking properly. One who can't understand it is foolish, even if he's a philosopher. But it's still a big step from this possibility of experiencing thinking and the super-sensible world to a knowing of the latter. This can only be attained if the soul works on itself for a long time, but it is attained.

The first sign of an awakening in the spiritual world is a feeling of expansion, as if one were spreading and flowing out. In the sense world I'm here, the object is over there and it makes an impression on me. Consciousness comes about when we bump into objects through the organs of touching, hearing, seeing. However in the spiritual world the condition of being closed off in oneself ceases. One feels as if one were spread out in other beings. In the physical world we experience everything inside our skin, as for instance the prick of a needle. Not so in the spiritual world. There thinking and feeling flow out. One experiences pleasure and pain in others. For instance if one runs into a deceased person who's in pain, one has to experience the pain with him as long as one is in spiritual contact with him. One's relation to the sense world also becomes quite different through this change. The way in which we ordinarily experience the physical world is conditioned by the fact that the body through which we experience things is sensorial. If we hit our head against a hard object we feel it because the head doesn't yield, that is, because it's hard or similar to the object. But no impression is made if one confronts the sense world with super-sensible experience. Spiritual organs are too soft and flexible, as it were. That's why all physical things seem like empty spaces. A comparison can give one a perception of this. The water in a glass is invisible. The gas pearls in soda water are visible even though the bubbles are much more rarefied than water; they're nothing in comparison with the denser fluid. So the nothing is visible and the something is invisible. For a spiritual gaze that's the way things really are with the physical world. Like these pearls in water, all atoms are holes or empty bubbles in the spiritual world. All physical things are composed of countless numbers of such holes. When we touch things we bump into these holes, this nothing. That's the way things are with man's body also. Seen spiritually, for instance, the brain is a spiritual form. There are countless empty pearls or holes in it, and they make up what a scientist investigates with his instruments. Another thing is that a man feels that all the good, right and true things that he thinks stream out from him. He feels as if they're growing into the future, that they're germ-forming for the future. But the wrong, bad, ugly things that he thinks and feels also grow out like this. He really feels them streaming out of him, and he knows that the bad thoughts streaming from him will later serve as food for the good ones. So they're also necessary. Then he begins to understand why so many bad, wrong and ugly thoughts and feelings assail him during meditation. When he knows that they're necessary forces and food for the future he'll also assess them correctly. He won't have to complain about them if he's strong enough to not let them flow into his willing and action. There is a big secret connected with this. The same forces that underlie our bad thoughts were rayed out by hierarchical beings on old Moon, from angels up to Spirits of Form. Thereby they brought about Moon existence. But Lucifer and Ahriman remained behind and are only raying out these forces now. They now work into physical things that have condensed further, right into man's physical blood, and that's how evil arises. They're not evil in themselves; an esoteric must let them work on him but not let them become physically condensed. Then they remain of value for future good thoughts.

The following formulas are given to promote an experience of these first steps into the spiritual world. Budding esoterics should do the first one in the AM, the second after the day's retrospect and the third once every few days. More advanced esoterics should only do them occasionally, the first and second together and the third maybe only on Sundays.

The 7-line form of the verses arose by itself, that is, the spiritual material reveals itself in such a way that it presses into this form. (The verse in the lesson from March 5th 1914 in Stuttgart, is included here for reference.)

Lines one and two of the third formula give one much to think about. They were revealed like that, although it seems to be grammatically incorrect, since it says floats instead of float. Later it became clear that this is intended. “Shining I and luminous soul” should be thought of as a single entity. Likewise “what was thought, what was known” are treated as one. Thinking and knowing are not one in the physical world, but in the spiritual one they flow together. Something that's thought is either wrong—then it destroys itself—or it's right—then it's also something that's revealed: knowledge.

Formulas like these or the ones in Occult Science, for instance, are not made up or fabricated. The intellect isn't involved in this at all to begin with. A seer gets things revealed to him. They stand there. Only then does he elaborate them with his intellect. The first formula describes the experience where physical things seem to consist of nothing, like bubbles in water. The soul sees that ordinary sensory existence is an illusion, and it tries to gain knowledge of what is truly real.

The second formula describes the experience of the raying out of good and bad thoughts.

The third formula should be used as a test of the progress one has made. When one meditates it one must speak the words inwardly so that everything resounds meaningfully. With these lines one tries to see how far one has gotten; whether for instance one already experiences something from:

What was thought, what was known

Now becomes dense spirit existence.

Of course this must be continued patiently and without flagging week after week. One can also look upon these formulas as a different form of what's always said at the end of these classes. The first one describes how sensorial things become non-existent when one grows into the spiritual world, and spiritual reality is seen to be what we come from: Ex Deo nascimur.

The second formula describes the experience of good and bad thoughts as forces that'll work in the future. This is only possible if the soul is embraced and illumined by spiritual light—Christ—after it has released itself from the physical world: In Christo morimur.

And the third formula describes how real knowledge becomes revealed to the soul that's waking up in the spirit: Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus.

Last time we spoke about how the soul should spread out ever more and pour out into space, and then contract into itself to see what is weaving within it. For these formulas were given to you, dear sisters and brothers, which can be used at will and also be passed on to other people who didn't attend all classes. Today another thought will be placed before your souls, something concrete, a mood that can help you to get into the spiritual world. Let's recall what happens in sleep. The etheric and physical bodies remain in bed while the astral body and ego are outside in the spiritual world. Why is it that a man doesn't experience the world he's in during sleep consciously like he experiences the physical world in day consciousness? Because during the time a man is asleep he has a strong urge to return to his physical body. This longing is like a darkening of the brightness of the spiritual world, so that he doesn't perceive the latter at all. The astral forces that are active in him there work so strongly that he wouldn't leave the physical body at all, if it wasn't so tired and used up and didn't so urgently need strengthening and refreshment through sleep. This drive or longing for his physical body is what prevents a man from consciously experiencing spiritual worlds during sleep. If he were clairvoyant he would see bright rays going from his astral body and ego to his physical and etheric bodies the longing for reunion is expressed in them. Let's suppose someone suddenly became clairvoyant during sleep; how would he see himself? When we meet someone on the physical plane we encounter his physical form in which an ego lives. Things are different in the spiritual world; we shouldn't think that we see someone there in the same form as on the physical plane. Here in the physical world we see single things separate from each other with sharp contours; but what weaves in the spiritual world are mobile pictures which we recognize to be spirits of higher hierarchies who send out their helpers to give the right expression to the human form. These messengers of the Spirits of Form are as it were still at the childhood stage, but they'll work themselves higher to the degree that they cultivate the human ego. Another host of elemental beings float around man's head and guard the ego-being. They work on his thinking and were sent out by Spirits of Movement and Spirits of Form. Other elemental beings, emissaries of Spirits of Wisdom, work on man's heart and bring about the circulation. Then there are elemental beings who work on man's warmth sense. In the spiritual world warmth arises from the relation between two beings, rather than from a particular source.

Other elemental beings work at the word sense, that is, not on the spoken words that one can hear from others, but these beings stand behind the single consonants and vowels that make up a word; they work on the composition of letters and syllables. One who is outside of his body can't understand words that are spoken; he lacks the physical organ for this; but he watches elemental beings as they bring single letters together to form a word. Man has 12 senses and not just 5, as conventional science would have you believe: sight, thinking, warmth, equilibrium, word, life, smell, taste, hearing, touch, movement and ego senses. Standing behind these 12 senses are elemental beings who are the servants and helpers of Spirits of Form, Movement and Wisdom. These elemental beings are still children, as it were, but to the extent that a man advances and develops himself up to Jupiter these elemental messengers of the higher hierarchies will also develop; some day they'll be Jupiter's zodiac after the earth has gone through its seven rounds and everything emerges again in a new configuration. Just as what previously worked on us on the Moon and now stands behind our senses has become the earth's zodiac. Jupiter will also have a sun and beings who now work into our blood system will stand behind it. It's only with the greatest awe and admiration that we can see how hosts of elemental beings are working on the wonderful temple of the human body.

My dear brothers and sisters, put yourself in this mood in earnest meditation on how countless elemental beings build up the wonderful temple that is to be the dwelling of the human I.

Why is it that we don't see these elemental beings at work? Because the moment we wake up the Guardian of the Threshold conceals the spiritual worlds from us. Waking up means that we shoo away these elemental beings from their working place. And as soon as we're in day consciousness Ahriman sees to it that the spiritual world is covered for us. He paints the picture of the sense world, and as we devote ourselves to maya—the great deceiver—the beings or souls that work on man's spiritual organization disappear for us. The physical body that we know is all a product of Ahriman, whereas we must know that the soul life that we merely experience in the physical body is Lucifer's work. He fills our soul with so much pride and blindness that it gets wrong ideas and feelings about the spiritual world.

Ex Deo nascimur
In ... morimur
Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus.

Our exercises are suited to bring us into the spiritual world. We're also in the spiritual world at night, but not consciously. Why not? Because we are in the habit of perceiving through physical senses, and we're too weak to develop consciousness without this. What are these sense perceptions really? They also contain what we can attain with a higher consciousness: imaginations or pictures of higher reality, inspirations through which spiritual beings disclose themselves to us and the intuitions through which we become united with divine beings. All of this is contained in the percept, but it doesn't go into us, and when we investigate why this is so we find that it's Lucifer who burns it with the fire of our passions, drives and desires. Lucifer has made his home in the heart, and that's where the burning of the imaginations, inspirations and intuitions that underlie sensory things takes place, for pictures of spiritual beings press into us with every breath, with every perception. At the beginning of the Lemurian epoch when what the Bible describes as the battle between the Elohim and Lucifer took place, the latter mixed himself and his fire into man's heart.

But the heart had been created by the Elohim to be their dwelling. Something can be small in the physical world and be big in the spiritual world and vice versa. Thus the heart is only a small thing physically, and anatomists think that it's still the same thing when it's taken out of the body, but in reality the heart is something that's very big in the spiritual world, and it was supposed to be the Elohim's dwelling. But when Lucifer moved into the human heart the Elohim kept a place for themselves in it, they can still live in it and this becomes manifest in human life as the voice of conscience. Where this speaks something is speaking that doesn't belong to Lucifer with his consuming fire; a direct inspiration of the Gods still gets to men in it. And we see that this voice of conscience became objective for men at important points in human history and stood before them. That is how it was with Moses, on whose soul the destiny of his whole tribe pressed. He climbed up Mt. Sinai; he heard the voice of his God in the burning thorn bush (in the fire that Lucifer kindled), who later gave him the commandments on Mt. Sinai that became the foundation of all later human laws.

After Lucifer had taken over the human heart in this way the Elohim had to place a counterweight on the other scale pan of the cosmic world order. This happened in the Atlantean epoch when Ahriman with all munitions was entrenched in man's brain by the Elohim to bring his cooling effect against luciferic fire to bear there. And the part of the fire that burns the imaginations, inspirations and intuitions of percepts that Ahriman cools down becomes thoughts and ideas in men.

Lovelessness is a particularly good fuel for Lucifer. Ancient initiates always knew that Lucifer with his fire thrones in our heart and that Ahriman in the head cools this fire, and a last remnant of this is in Aristotle's statement that warmth goes from the heart to the head and is cooled there.

Now one could object that it's rather strange that both Lucifer and Gods live in our heart. It sounds as if there was only one heart in the world, and yet there are just as many hearts as there are men. We run into a riddle here that's one of the smallest ones an occultist encounters, and that is: How have many arisen out of one? We don't intend to give the solution to this riddle here, but one can try to press ever further into it through meditative reflection.

(The verse in the lesson from March 5th 1914 in Stuttgart, is included here for reference.)

To things I turn myself
I turn myself with ray senses;—
Sense existence, you deceive me!—
What flees existence as nothing:
For you it's existence and reality;
May what must seem like nothing to you
Be disclosed to my inner life.—

(I must attain this: it's the taking of a position towards the new, outer world.)

Spirit light warm me
Let me feel myself volitionally in you.
Well thought, truly known things
How does shining I experience you
May weaving of error, badly thought things
Show itself to shining soul
That I may be weaving in myself.

(That's a questioning and experiencing in the new existence within.)

Shining I and luminous soul (- oneself -)
Floats over real developing being
What was thought, what was known
Now becomes dense spirit existence
And what seems like existence to the senses
Lives in the ocean of divine reality
Like aery existential bubbles.

(In anticipation of truth. It's a guessing, a feeling of the new self.)

When elaborated each of these strophes contains the same thing that's successively compressed in our rosicrucian verse in the ten words:

Ex Deo nascimur,
In Christo morimur,
Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus

My dear sisters and brothers, it would be good if everyone who participates in an esoteric class were completely aware of the importance of the same. We're supposed to step out of everyday life consciously; it must seem to us as if the veil that separates us from the spiritual world is completely pulled away so that we can place ourselves in it. In a proper meditation we should become body-free, leave everything that's connected with corporeal things, extinguish all interests in corporeal life and only be devoted to the object of our meditation. We should step out of our body and leave it behind completely, as in sleep, except that in meditation it happens consciously. One thing we do take with us, and that's the effect of lungs and heart, the breath of life that Jahve Elohim once blew into earth man. While we're entirely devoted to our meditation we'll have the feeling that our brain is only an etheric brain. When a man thinks it has nothing to do with his brain. When he feels it has nothing to do with the heart organ. Just as when a carriage leaves deep ruts in a dirt road this has nothing to do with the wheels as such but is dependent on the road's consistency, so one can't judge organs by what one sees, as physiologists and anatomists do. It's not the organs that think and feel, it's the spiritual beings and forces that work into them. Just as letters are only characters for a word's content, so organs are only signs through which higher beings express themselves in men.

Our cerebellum is a remnant of the Moon stage of evolution; it sits there as a sign of the battles that the Gods fought for us. The cerebellum arose from what was thought on old Moon. There were no errors in our thoughts then, for divine powers thought for us and guided our thoughts. Man had no freedom yet; divine beings directed him. Now that he's become independent he must be responsible for what he thinks. There are also remnants of old Moon in the cerebrum's pineal and pituitary glands; on old Moon they were what the lung and heart are in man today. And what a man does now will form his cerebrum on Jupiter. What he thinks in connection with his cerebrum now will form his cerebellum on Jupiter. A man must bear the consequences of his thinking now that he's become free, and the cerebellum sits in the back of his head like a judge, for it will take the effects of everything that he thought on earth over to Jupiter. And so I ask you: Do we still need a Judgement? Isn't this judgement much more gripping and powerful than the one Michelangelo could portray in his Last Judgement? Just estimate the tragedy that lies in the fact that a man now has to bear the consequences of his deeds, feeling and thinking himself.

But we have a consolation, a support in the fact that Christ has entered earth evolution: if we entrust ourselves to him he will bear our deeds, feelings and thoughts over to Jupiter. That's why it's so important that spiritual science should enter our age, so that an understanding for the true Christ can become alive again.

In her Secret Doctrine Blavatsky speaks of Jahve as a moon God, but because she mixed in her own feelings there are errors in there, and much of the bad karma that burdens the Theosophical Society arose from this. And since Jahve was understood so little it's not surprising that one understands the Christ being so little now. To correct this Lucifer and Ahriman had to be spoken of right at the beginning of our Movement, for one can only get a right estimation of Jahve through a knowledge of their nature and activities. One only leads men into spiritual worlds properly if one leads them past Lucifer and Ahriman so that they get to the Christ there. If one doesn't place Christ at the centre of esoteric life one leads them to Lucifer. But one doesn't like to call these things by the right name, one deceives oneself about their true nature. What one calls scientific in certain circles is really ahrimanic. For instance, a Theosophist said that Occult Science is psychic-mystical, whereas the writings of Besant and Leadbeater are occult and scientific. But they're ahrimanic, and what he calls psychic and mystical should be called Christian. For Occult Science and our whole work was inspired by the Christ being himself. We should always keep this in mind, my dear sisters and brothers.

We came over from the Moon where we were still in the lap of the Gods: Ex Deo nascimur. We unite ourselves with Christ on earth and die into him: In ... morimur. Then the Holy Spirit will lead us over to the reincarnation of the earth—Jupiter: Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus.