| 270. Esoteric Instructions: Fourth Lesson
07 Mar 1924, Dornach Translated by John Riedel |
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| For example, you can present the question of whether one can be really clear in understanding people who are spoken about as having abhorrent natures, as sometimes portrayed by Shakespeare, who has portrayed such people moderately clearly in imagination. |
| Then we may recollect that lying within us, made by means of the earth, is all that draws us down and under, beneath the human, that darkens our ego, that drives us into sub-humanity. However, we must bring this into awareness, this being united so with the earth, in spite of all the beauty and livability spread over the face of the earth, this being pulled down and under as human beings, sinking in this way into sub-humanity. |
| For the gods do not wish us to remain alone upon the earth; they wish to draw us into their circle. They wish us to become beings living under their care. The forces of the depths of earth, however, wish to snatch us away from the force of the gods. |
| 270. Esoteric Instructions: Fourth Lesson
07 Mar 1924, Dornach Translated by John Riedel |
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My dear friends! We have endeavored in the previous lessons to become acquainted with the Guardian of the Threshold. And this acquaintanceship with the Guardian of the Threshold must become more and more solid, so solid in fact, that the intended solemnity of this acquaintanceship with the Guardian of the Threshold, in its entirety, in reality can stand before our souls at all times. For in this way we will have entered an area that is substantially different from other areas of spiritual life, areas usually visited in today’s civilization in contemplating the nature of what is called the spiritual world, and in forming an acquaintanceship with it. A meeting with the Guardian of the Threshold is most certainly the first thing that a person comes upon, if in a truly earnest sense a person’s relationship with the spiritual world becomes possible. A relationship with the spiritual world cannot come into being without this appreciation for meeting the Guardian of the Threshold. For only on the other side of the Threshold is the spiritual world. As one receives messages from the spiritual world, then these messages are so to be taken up, merely as messages, as to establish for us a relationship to the spiritual world. I would like to present to you, initially, of all that should be surveyed by our souls today, an anecdote, my dear friends, an anecdote taken from ancient esoteric traditions. Once upon a time a student was taken into the mysteries. He fulfilled the necessary prerequisites. He had achieved a certain condition of worthiness, more than others who had never engaged their hearts and minds in such a manner, so that in a short time he was drawn into the sort of state that most people would possibly see as clairvoyant, but actually, he had just stepped into relationship with the spiritual world. And as he stepped into such a relationship, moreover into the only proper sort of relationship in which one intuitively receives impartations from the spiritual world, the master spoke to him: Behold, when I speak to you in purity, then the words that I speak to you are no longer merely human words; the words I use to speak are only clothed in the words of men. The words I use to speak to you are the thoughts of gods, and these thoughts of gods will at first be openly spoken to you through human words. You must likewise be clear that I call upon all that is in your soul. You must bring forth to the words that I say to you in the service of the gods, all your thinking, all your feeling, and all your willing. You must bring forth to what I speak to you all the enthusiasm of your soul, all the inner warmth, all the inner fire. You must bring this forth in vigilant awareness, a mindfulness as intense as you are able to deploy in your inner life of soul. But there is another force of soul, which I am not calling to your attention initially, most certainly not appealing to, namely your memory, your ability to recollect. And I would be most happy if you do not just gather into your memory, all that I say to you. I would be most happy, if tomorrow you have simply forgotten what I am to say to you. For what you usually call your memory, what other people call your memory, is initially only appropriate for matters of the earth, is not appropriate for matters of the gods. And when you appear before me again tomorrow, and when I once again speak to you, appealing to your thinking, feeling, and willing, to all of your enthusiasm, to all your warmth, to all your inner fire, to all your vigilant mindfulness of soul, then all should be new in confronting these forces of your soul, all you should accept. It should all be new, fresh, full of life, and so likewise for the next day, and the next day afterward. On every day it should be new and fresh and full of life. I speak, I appeal not to your memory. I appeal not to your ability to recollect. At the same time, I am not saying that you should not retain some of what has been spoken of today. You should just not entrust it solely to your memory. You should be on watch as to what your memory does with it. But what should lead you to me tomorrow with a new state of mind, that should be your direct sensing of it, that should be your innermost soul-impression. You should preserve what is being spoken to you today. Please take note that memory, the ability to recollect, is there for the sake of learning. But what is said to you of esoteric matters should not be there merely for the sake of learning, but rather, it should be there throughout life, and should in every hour that you chance upon it be able to be newly alive, without your needing the appropriate conceptions and visualizations of your memory to come to your aid. It is in fact so. We should approach whatever sort of esoteric truth we chance upon in such a way that the thought never comes to us, that it is already known by us. For the ways of the esoteric do not pertain to knowledge, but to direct experience. And inwardly, where memory also abides, in deep layers of our soul-life, there the esoteric should also be enfolded by us and held in trust. My dear friends, when you mull this over, your contemplation of this will mean a great deal for achieving a perception of genuine esoteric life in times to come. And so what must be taken quite in earnest, at the very moment that we come face-to-face with the esoteric, our simple understanding of the esoteric calls forth in us quite another relationship to thinking, to feeling, to willing, than we are used to in everyday awareness. For in everyday awareness a person's thinking, feeling, and willing are bundled together. We can take a rather trivial example, and be overwhelmed by citing such a trivial example, at just how narrowly our thinking, feeling, and willing are bundled in ordinary awareness. Just think, you may be acquainted with someone, no one in particular, and your relationship with this person may be either somewhat close, or somewhat distant. Whatever you have mutually experienced you have tucked away in your memory and infused with your feelings. If and when you happen to come upon this person, a certain impetus arises in you in regard to your manner, in regard to your whole demeanor towards the person. Your thoughts and feelings in regard to this person continue to live in you. One day someone might come along who either reminds you about, or says something about this person, so that thoughts about the person burst forth from within you. At the same time the selfsame feelings you have been holding for this person, either for or against, also flash up from within. If you regarded him fondly, your fondness flashes up, if in distaste, your distaste flashes up. If you had embarked with him on some intended course of action, this also flashes up, that you had embarked on some sort of intentional activity with him. You simply cannot separate all that you carry in your feelings and force of will in regard to this person, from your thoughts about the person. All of this, which in a manner lies wholly dormant in one's organization of soul, can in no way be held to be esoteric truth in the true sense. Just that can be held to be esoteric truth, in its true sense, which can be present in the moment. If someone is acquainted with a person, then he has a certain predisposition toward this person. To him certain things about this person may be extraordinarily antipathetic. But he has the possibility of remembering this person, of visualizing this person, without the antipathies that he carries for this person in his soul, which he has the possibility of somehow snuffing out. He can simply think about him. My dear friends, you may imagine that it is really somewhat difficult, shall we say, to simply think about your enemy without allowing unfriendly feelings to emerge. But in properly musing about such things poetically, then you can cultivate this in yourself. For example, you can present the question of whether one can be really clear in understanding people who are spoken about as having abhorrent natures, as sometimes portrayed by Shakespeare, who has portrayed such people moderately clearly in imagination. If such people were introduced to me in the course of my life, I would have quite a bit of antipathy toward them. But as a poet I can also, in all likelihood, even though they are so obviously villains, place such people in my mind's eye objectively. I can simply think about them. It is sometimes possible to do this as a poet, for one certainly does not always want to see a Shakespearean villain laid flat on his back, thrown down, and thoroughly thrashed. As a poet it is possible for thoughts to lose their connection to feelings. You must of course do this as a proper esoteric, and also have the ability to bring it forward into life. At the moment something esoteric is presented, in order for it to be drawn into the soul in the right way, it must be possible to detach thoughts as such from their connection to feelings. For it is not lost by itself. When we are thinking about esoteric material, or I might say, when it is so starkly drawn into thoughts, initially it should lie very far removed from any personal feelings, for it simply cannot be comprehended unless it is comprehended in pure thoughts. Therefore, if we are to hearken to the esoteric, and not as a sack of straw allow it all to pass complacently before us, then we must disassociate from that which the thought gives to us, which the feeling, the impulse of will develops in us. Feelings subsequently ought to be developed, for the esoteric should not remain a cold icy field that simply pours itself out and into our minds. The esoteric should immerse us in most brilliant enthusiasm. But such enthusiasm, such wealth of feeling, should really come forth from a source far removed, and should not come forth from thoughts. You see, about this we must be quite clear, if from here on our wealth of feelings are to achieve inner warmth in the right manner. When esoteric matters have been spoken outwardly, they have been spoken outwardly out of the sphere of the gods, and we bring forth our feelings not now as thoughts, but rather as realities. It was concerning this, in the very first lesson I delivered to this first class, concerning this I spoke in the first lesson, that the school itself speaks, namely the real spirit that runs through the school, and that it is necessary for us to perceive that the school has not grown out of just any particular personal viewpoint, but rather that it has been willed and has been initiated by the spiritual world. When we regard the school in this way, then will the school as an existence aware of itself give us the enthusiasm that we need. And then I would like you to understand still something more. Of course, my dear friends, in conventional life and in conventional knowledge we speak to one-another in words. In doing this we conceptualize the words, and thoughts come to us, thoughts meant to be communicated, for these thoughts are in the words. An esoteric must also utilize words, for he must of course speak. But he needs the words only in order to make apparent just how the spirit streams around and about in his reality and may flow into the hearts of men. So, in an esoteric school it is essential to gradually develop a sense of hearing behind the words. And when this sense has been developed, one may align with the esoteric, in what in all times, in all esoteric streams, has been known with such reverence, namely a familiarity with silence, a silence filled with holiness. And this holiness-filled silence is an essential and integral component of something else, without which the esoteric cannot be conveyed to a person. It is a key component of what we most definitely need in esotericism. It is a key component of a person's most inner humility. And without a person's innermost humility the esoteric cannot initially be approached. And why not? Well, if we are admonished to hear behind the words, then this applies to the most inwardly essential part of our souls. Not to our memories, it applies rather to the most inwardly essential part of our souls. And this brings into question our ability, it brings into consideration just how capable we are of hearing behind the words. And it would be good for us, for our own souls, to hear as much as possible. Moreover, it would be good to postpone thinking about it with too much confidence, about what has just begun to dawn within our souls, as if it were something that we ourselves could simply bring into the world as something definitely valid. We will need a long time, especially as we begin to hear behind the words, we will need a long time to personally come to terms with it. And we should develop this demeanor, that the esoteric must first live itself out in wordless weaving of the soul, before it can be considered to be inwardly mature. And so it is, with the esoteric we must indeed move away from what in normal life lies in the sense of the words, to what lies in the deeper constitution of soul. And that is just what was bestowed upon us here in the last Class lesson, in the mantric verses I laid out for you, my dear friends. A chant of rhythmic meters appeared, appearing in the first verse in trochaic rhythm, in the second verse in iambic rhythm, and in the third verse in spondaic rhythm. Only when we inwardly feel the flow of trochees in rhythm, descending from hill to vale, may we feel properly attuned therein to what our thoughts are drawn from. When we feel with the soul this valley-bound descent from the heavens to the earth, then we may feel a proportionate sense of what lies within our living thinking weaving. So the trochaic verse began with a syllable that was stressed, and proceeded to an unstressed syllable, and thereby should have produced in us a clarion call, a call to the blood to circulate, to circulate filled with soul, to place itself within the abode of the spirit. We don't simply stay there, with such a mantra beginning to ̄ within our souls, and to some extent also within our thoughts, but rather we bring ourselves into motion with just what with lively spirit moves in the world, by means of which a person's thoughts live and weave in a person's soul. In the first verse it came forth as a calling out to one's weaving thoughts.
Yes, the gods have gathered us into their midst from afar, in that they have given us thoughts. And we stride, insofar as we allow these thoughts to move with life in our souls, we stride from the summit, where the gods have laid out the thoughts for us, which they have bequeathed on us, we stride from this summit down into the valley, where with these thoughts we encompass and comprehend earthly things. It's quite different with feelings. There we have the correct inward bearing when we feel ourselves remaining down in the valley, and by means of our feelings we mount up with springing step, as if on a ladder, up to the gods. Feelings bring us conversely into waves of motion from below upward. So the mantric verse is constructed iambically. It begins with the unstressed syllable and rises to the strongly stressed syllable. And we should sense this.
It is different again when we come to willing. If we would come to willing, then we must become aware of how our human nature is actually somewhat split apart. Then we must approach the gods in sensing, and must through strength in sensing be halfway able to bear the impulse of willing. That is bestowed solely when we meditate in spondees, with a stressed syllable following the beginning stressed syllable.
As I already said the last time, what is needed here is not merely to grasp the meaning of the words, but also to grasp what lies in the inner movement of the words. We must wrench our souls into motion. In this way we no longer remain merely within ourselves, but we expand outward into the world. Remaining with words, remaining attached merely to the meaning of words, leaves us within ourselves. The esoteric indeed has much to say about this, about our need to grow out into the world, out into togetherness with the world, ever more and more to come out of ourselves. For only so, by ever more and more coming out of ourselves, will we be able to endure the discontinuity of thinking, feeling, and willing, which are initially held together in awareness in daily life by the embodiment of our I. Without, they must be held together by the gods. For this, however, we must enter into the reality of the gods. For this we must grow out into togetherness with the world. For this we must really learn to develop an inner demeanor, by means of which we may learn to say honorably and quite in earnest, "Here is my hand; I regard it so. There is the tree; I regard it so. I regard my hand so; there you are. I regard the tree so; there you are. I regard the clouds so; there you are. I regard the rainbow so; there you are. I regard the thunder so; there you are. I regard the bolt of lightning so; there you are. I am at one with the world.” Abstractly, disingenuously, it is easy to pass right by this. Concretely, with genuine purity and honor, a person would have to inwardly skip over quite a lot to pass it by. Only when one does not shy away from this, but has a steadfast inner state of mind, does one have the inner demeanor that is needed. For the esoteric, my dear friends, the question must be ever prominent, "I regard my hand; it belongs to me.” Where would I be in this life on earth, begun so many decades ago, without having had my hand? It is an essential part of all that has occurred, of all that I have become. But the tree, the tree as it stands before us today, was formed in all its details out of the whole organism of the earth, during ancient moon-existence. It was formed specifically out of what was in the entire earth organism at that time, and it could not be as it is, the tree in all its detail, except in having been formed in this way. In the same way, moreover, the composition of my thinking also originated out of the whole being of the ancient moon-existence. Were the tree not to have come into being, today I would not be able to think. It is not only the hand that is painfully necessary for my present-day earth existence. The tree is painfully necessary in importance for my having become a thinking being. And so, in what way is the hand worth more than the tree? Why should I consider the hand to be dearer to me than the tree? I come to a reckoning, that everything that I call the external world is much, much more related to my inner nature, than what I can regard as my delightful inner nature in this incarnation. That, however, to be felt in all its depths and honesty, must be learned. And today we will place before ourselves three verses, mantric verses, through which this feeling of unity with all so-called external existence may gradually be stamped upon the soul. How do we stand at first in relation to external existence? We look down upon the earth. We feel dependent upon this earth; it gives us just the things that we need in external life. We look around into the distance. There comes the sun, arising in the morning. There goes the sun, setting in the evening. The light shines steadily down upon the earth. It appears in the distance, and it sets in the distance. We look overhead. At night the star-filled heavens mysteriously speak to us. In this three-part gazing, we have defined our relationship with the world. I look down, I look around, and I look overhead. But doing it with the most intense awareness possible, is just how we should do it, as delineated in the following mantric verse.
[The verse was now written on the blackboard.]
Well, there it is, my dear friends, these are the things that fetter and bind us on the earth, if we do not bring them together as human beings in full awareness. We look down on the earth, knowing that contained therein are crystals, each tiny one of which is held in earth-embrace, knowing, that earth exerts the power of gravity, that it pulls each tiny particle, causing it to fall to earth, knowing that it pulls on each of us as well. We tend not to think about all of this. We do not think about the appetites, instincts, ambitions, and passions that are within us, of all that is living in us, that we are in the midst of in our lowly human nature, in the midst of all that belongs to the earth. When we direct our gaze down and downward, and say, just what is it that the earth is doing in us? Then we may recollect that lying within us, made by means of the earth, is all that draws us down and under, beneath the human, that darkens our ego, that drives us into sub-humanity. However, we must bring this into awareness, this being united so with the earth, in spite of all the beauty and livability spread over the face of the earth, this being pulled down and under as human beings, sinking in this way into sub-humanity. In honorably owning up to this we are developing ourselves into true human beings. But then, we may become conditioned, not merely to turning our gaze down in developing our human potential, but rather more to turning our gaze outward, all the while holding ourselves up high, turning our gaze around and about, upon all that the earth forcefully encompasses, upon all that our humanity encircles and gathers unto itself. Something begins, already on the physical level, something that in a certain measure lifts us up on top of the downward-drawing powers of the depths of earth. The forces of the depths of earth can cause a man to become evil, but not so easily the air that we breathe, which also belongs to the circle of earth, and still less easily the light, left in the circle of the earth by the sun. We may look upon the air that we breathe and upon visible light as having little spiritual significance, but the very gods live in what we breathe and in the light. And we ourselves must be aware of this, that especially in light the might of gods is made to rule, and that something else rules beside all that runs through us as forces from the depths of earth. All of which brings us into alignment with the second mantric verse. [The second verse was now written on the blackboard.]
We may not always be aware that we can love the substance of what radiates down upon the earth as light, be it sunlight, or starlight. We may not always be aware of this, although when we become aware of it, that we can love the sunlight, that we can love it warmly as a friend, then we may also learn that gods circle the earth in this raiment, in these robes of light. Then sunshine ceases to appear simply as earth's illumination, but rather, sunshine becomes the garb of gods, of gods wandering the earth arrayed in light. And then something comes into being for us, arising out of this experiencing of the light, namely, wisdom arises. For the gods bring their wisdom into our hearts, deep into our souls. And then, in having differentiated in feelings, we actually have begun to ascend, to soar. Initially we developed feelings corresponding to the forces of the depths of earth. That part of our humanity belonging to the forces of the depths of earth we rightfully spurned. We lifted ourselves up into the higher part of our humanity, into the part adherent to the essence of the gods spread out over the earth and arrayed in light, into the part we do not allow to remain within the circle of earth, but rather, while still wandering on the earth, into that part with which we enter into the circle of the gods of light, so that later, when we go through the portal of death, we may continue to wander in the circle of the gods. For the gods do not wish us to remain alone upon the earth; they wish to draw us into their circle. They wish us to become beings living under their care. The forces of the depths of earth, however, wish to snatch us away from the force of the gods. We were acquainted with this in an earlier verse, which will now be repeated.
And of course, we must feel it, we must put ourselves out into the world, we must feel and identify ourselves as being one with the world. But we have still not gathered up a conscious mindfulness of our full humanity, if we are not able to also look up into the heights. We must look into the depths and we must look into the surrounding expanse, but we must also look up into the heights. And in what otherwise reigns in our everyday consciousness as a mixture of the depths, the expanses, and the heights, in this we must differentiate between a conscious mindfulness of the depths, a conscious mindfulness of the expanses, and a conscious mindfulness of the heights. [The start of the third verse was now written on the blackboard.]
We can feel this, if and when we are fully aware when communing with the heights. But just think for a moment, my dear friends, as if you were standing outdoors in a field, looking up at the star-bedecked sky in the heavenly heights. It is most noticeable then, if we choose this happenstance, but of course it can also occur in full sunshine. But it is most noticeable when we picture ourselves standing outdoors in a field, looking up at the star-bedecked sky. We feel at one with the world. We feel, there you are. But the single spot we are standing on, on the earth, held in such high respect, normally regarding it as a part of ourselves, why, this simply melts away when we look into the far-off distance splayed out over the whole vault of the heavens above. Done properly, our limited sense of self ceases, and we become selfless as we expand outward without end into the far-off distances of the heights.
[More of the third stanza was written down.]
Whoever has really felt the sunlight streaming radiantly over the earth as being the illuminated raiment of gods, drawn in and out of the human soul with every breath of air, and whoever then looks out and beyond, feeling selfless in selfhood in heaven's heights, such a person soon comes upon, and furthers the development in his awareness, of what arrives within the following lines, and is contained within the following lines.
[The third stanza was completed on the board.]
The heights have spoken. And so, as we may grow together in love with the gods, radiant over the earth in illuminated garb, we may likewise grow together with the words intoned from the heights, if we develop an appreciation for it, aspiring to align with the powers of thought from on high. However, my dear friends, you may only become inwardly filled through and through with a proper appreciation of your conscious awareness extending out, of consciously becoming aware of the depths, the breadths, and the heights, when with proper depth and clarity of soul, you are able to compare the contradistinctions between the three verses [The first, second, and third stanzas were indicated.]. You arrive before the Guardian of the Threshold. From this experience your thinking, your fully alive conceptualization, should hold sway in your soul. The Guardian of the Threshold shows you the third beast, of which we have spoken of in previous lessons. It resounds within you; just what characterizes the third beast resounds within.
This is the one that draws us down and under. We wrest ourselves away from this one, by means of saying to ourselves with fortified soul:
It makes little difference, I may say, in one's perspective, whether you gaze upon the beast, or whether you gaze upon yourself doing the wrestling. Think a moment, how similar people cling to one another, both characterized by being drawn down and under, the one openly displaying the beast, the other becoming its attentive servant. But now let us turn to the second beast, and take up just what wrests us away from the second beast. Let us place both mantric verses side by side. The sentiment, the spirit, is altogether different. On the one hand the ghastly display of the second beast, on the other hand the appeal to the gods, coming to us arrayed in light. Listen and hear, next to one another, how these two mantric verses are so very different in their whole style.
As we characterize the third beast first, we should place the corresponding mantric verse next to the third beast’s characterization. At first, we just try to avoid losing our way, given the challenge of remaining aware of just where the third beast is leading us. As we turn our awareness to the second beast and to the associated mantric verse [Feel how from world expanse…] however, the verse itself has already done it, and carried us off and away from the beast, the one we characterize in its horrid manner of mockery. And as we progress to the first, we will see how the character of the first beast contains willfulness in impeding us in human life in our pure and holy overview of the heights of heaven. This first beast is characterized by this style; it is willful in trying to throw us deeply into disarray within, as we turn our attention to the mantric verse that is proclaimed to us in heaven's heights.
And so, just as we would be scorched by what has been said in this verse and would rise into the flame, just then the other verse appears, becoming a comfort and giving grace concerning what the first beast is. Through our own brave strength of soul, thus appears the other verse concerning him.
You see, as we have already seen in the last lesson, that we are taking on an inner rhythm. If we want to come into the midst of the weaving of the high illuminated being of the world with our own being, then we have to make known to ourselves now, that the things which up to now have approached us in the esoteric have a certain inner coherence, and how we must ever and ever again re-engage and re-form a relationship not merely with the sense of the words, for they try to remain earthly, but rather we must re-engage in a relationship with the demeanor of the words. And this demeanor will confront us in the entirety, but will also confront us in the individual details. So, we take up the first verse, "Feel how the depths of earth," in which we are redirected to the depths of earth. And the other verse directs us to "The third beast's glazed eye.” They stand next to one another. In the second verse, "Feel how from world’s expanse," we feel we have come upon the gods garbed in light. Here we are lifted up, if we can really feel it, over whatever in the world mocks matters of the gods. "The second beast, the mocking face," will in truth be effaced through the bright sunshine, if we will only embrace the bright sunshine in spirit. And most certainly, the third verse, beginning with "The first beast, the bony mind," should arrest our attention. We will only warm ourselves if and when we emerge from our immobility through an overview of the heights of heaven. And so we may therefore say:
And so, we may gradually feel our way into spiritual living, and spiritual living will ever more and more become second nature to us. [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]
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| 270. Esoteric Instructions: Fifth Lesson
14 Mar 1924, Dornach Translated by John Riedel |
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| This means that as we initially acquire a sense of it, comprehend it with understanding, it most certainly is not godlike. One might say that godliness, that divinity conceals itself in nature. |
| And now we live in an era in which human beings, if they have not been made aware of the sense of these words during earthly life, will come upon these words addressed to them in the language of the spirits, and will not understand them. This is how it is, this may happen to a person, when he is engaged in living the future, and is going through the world he must traverse, where these words will be addressed to him, and he cannot understand them, and must live through the agony of this lack of understanding. And all the agonies of this lack of understanding, what do they indicate? They indicate the ever-growing undercurrent of fear within one's soul that the connection to the spiritual powers of creation will be lost, and at the end of one's days the powers will not be there to which one owes his existence, but rather among unknown powers the wellsprings of his humanity will be lost. |
| 270. Esoteric Instructions: Fifth Lesson
14 Mar 1924, Dornach Translated by John Riedel |
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My dear friends! We have seen what sorts of transformation a person goes through when he becomes acquainted with the being of the Guardian of the Threshold. And the perception of the Guardian of the Threshold certainly hinges on whether the person approaches the spiritual world in a certain manner, and whether he is able to develop an appreciation of the spiritual world. We have seen that what in human inner nature normally consists of thinking, feeling, and willing, in the domains of the Guardian of the Threshold undergoes an intrinsic alteration. And here in the last class hour, it was made especially clear to us that thinking, feeling, and willing take essentially different paths on entry into the spiritual world, that they work in a way very different than they do customarily in people's earth-consciousness. We have seen how a person is strongly drawn by his willing into earthly inter-connectedness. In the blink of an eye, on a person’s entering the spiritual world, thinking, feeling, and willing simply disconnect in the soul from a definite relationship. And willing, which then lives in the soul a great deal more autonomously than previously, willing proves itself for a person in the highest degree to be related to those forces that drag a person down to earth. Feeling proves itself to be related to those forces that hold a person in the periphery of the earth, in that periphery of the earth, so to speak, within which light dwells, emerging on one side in the morning, brilliant all day long, and fading on the other side for the gaze of man in the evening. Thinking, however, is the force that directs a person upward towards the heavenly heights. And so, in the very same blink of an eye in which a person arrives before the Guardian of the Threshold, this Guardian makes him take note of his belonging to the entire world. He belongs through his willing to the earth, through his feeling to the periphery, and through his thinking to the higher powers. But my friends, this is indeed just what must become clear to a person on entering spiritual life. A growing together with the whole world enters through the life of the spirit. For customary awareness we stand there in the world just so, so that there outside, external to us, powers are ruling, are active in plant-realms, in animal-realms, in mineral-realms, in physical human-realms, the powers have dominion which we have access to through our senses and which actually show no relationship to human beings initially. And so we stand there apart as humans, gazing within ourselves, becoming aware of our thinking, feeling, and willing, becoming aware that our thinking, feeling, and willing are to some extent dissociated from external nature, are to some extent standing on their own. And we feel a deep rift between our humanity and the natural world spread out around. However, this rift must be bridged. For this rift, which for the most part we become aware of only in its external aspects in the course of customary awareness, this rift is precisely the Threshold. And becoming aware of the Threshold really rests on this: that we simply stop accepting whatever unconsciously turns us away from ourselves when we look simultaneously into our inner being and out upon an external natural world foreign to humans. When we direct our gaze externally the rift simply needs to become visible for us, then it emerges in its whole immensity and significance, not only for human life, but also for the life of the world. Now please take note, that the moment someone enters the esoteric, a bridge must be constructed over this rift, over this abyss. To some extent we must grow together with nature. We must cease saying to ourselves: that out there is nature, where moral life certainly does not take place. We must cease saying that we don’t share with minerals the search for morality, for which in soul we have the highest interest, and that we don’t share in the search with plants, that we don’t share in search with animals. And we have even ceased in sharing our search with other people in this materialistic era, because a person enters into relationship with another only with his physical being. And on the other hand, when one looks within a person, one finds in customary awareness merely passive thinking, by means of which the person misrepresents the world as an imagination, an enervated imagination. A thought living in us is merely our momentary property, through which we become acquainted with things of the world. It has, as a thought, initially no power. Our life of feeling is our innermost life. But remaining within it we are somehow separated, sundered from the world. And although we direct our will onto things outside of us, directly in this manner, in imparting our will onto external things, the external things take on the aspect of being foreign to us. Something grand must confront a person, when he becomes aware of the abyss between nature and himself, when he comes into proximity with the Guardian of the Threshold, something grand. And this grandeur is just that, already inscribed in words in ancient times, words moreover, which must be understood in new ways in each and every era, and these words are, that nature must appear divine, and a human must be able to persevere, must be able to exist in this enchantment. What does it mean, that nature must be able to appear divine? Nature must be able to appear divine. This means that as we initially acquire a sense of it, comprehend it with understanding, it most certainly is not godlike. One might say that godliness, that divinity conceals itself in nature. Nature appears in its externality. At first, seeing nature in a sort of relationship to the inner life of a man may occur only in dreams. We may be aware that an irregularity in our breathing indicates a dream full of joy and excitement, or quite the opposite a dream laden with fear and anger. We may become aware of how a clean room suffused by warmth comes to the forefront in certain dreams that have a sort of soulful moral quality. The dream carries such things on its back, nature laden with the psyche. We ourselves know that consciousness is submerged in our dreams, and so the spirit cannot impart things to us directly in dreams. We must begin to see much more, as inspiration comes to us, much more than what nature displays in the awareness of sleep. Well then, in the natural world we have at first, my friends, a relationship of our human physical body with what is fixed in nature, with all that carries the essential nature of earth. And we have a relationship of the human etheric body with all that carries within itself an essential nature that is watery. The relationship of the human physical body with the earth lies submerged, in solitude. And the relationship of the human etheric body with all that freely flows and fluxes with watery formative force, this also lies deeply in solitude under whatever man initially experiences. Something that is first and foremost quite close to a person is his process of breathing, his ruler-ship over the shaping of air. And so one may start from the breathing process, and then continue upward. On approaching the spiritual in this specific region, one may begin to feel one’s relationship to nature. In considering the breathing process, we have the shaping of formative forces of air, in which we live and move,
We then have, over the shaping of air, the containing or embracing nature of warmth,
and over the containing nature of warmth, the embrace of the beings of light. So, warmth-ether, light-ether.
If we rise up higher, we reach the region about which we must speak later, for initially it does not lie overly close to a person. That a person lives and moves in the element of air, this much can certainly be obvious for totally external observation. For a person needs merely to reflect on dreams, on how constrained they are in certain self-contained processes of irregularity, certain abnormalities of the breathing processes. When the breathing process plays out in waking life, we do not pay much attention to it, because as a rule we do not pay attention to processes that just occur in normal life as if by themselves. What the element of warmth signifies, life understood more or less through warmth, can be clarified in turn through a superficial observation. When we come into contact with a cold object, colder than our own body, when, for instance, we are startled by the chill of two cold metal rods, such as knitting needles, we may be aware of the disconnectedness of the cold rods, even if they are held fairly close to one another, for we are very susceptible to the cold. When we come into contact with some object or substance that is warmer than our own body, however, we don't notice the difference so starkly. If we were to hold two cold knitting needles close together, we would still notice which is the colder of the two. If we were to hold two knitting needles that had become warm, however, the close contact would flow together in a flash, and we would have to separate them quite a bit in order to form any distinct impression of their being separate. We are just much more sensitive to cold than to warmth. And why is this? We bear warmth with more ease, for we are warm-blooded creatures. The warmth is of our own nature, for we live and move in the warmth. As the cold is alien to us, we are extraordinarily and starkly sensitive to it. Please take note, it is more difficult to deal with light in customary awareness. Now we will certainly delve into these things more fully, with the esoteric in tow, but just now it may be enough to have taken into consideration from the viewpoint of customary awareness the formative forces of air and the behavior of warmth. Even so, in customary experience, a person feels that even the air is something external, is something belonging to nature. He feels that warmth is something that touches him from outside in some sort of way, and he feels that light is something that comes to him from outside. The very moment a person makes the jump of his life, bringing himself into proximity with the Guardian of the Threshold, in that very moment he becomes aware of just how inwardly and intimately he is related to all that he previously confronted as external to himself. I have certainly often drawn attention to how at every moment of our lives, even for customary awareness, we may become aware on a basic level of the relationship we have with the world, directly through our relationship with air. There outside is the air. This selfsame air, that is just now out there, somewhat later I will draw into myself. Still later the air in me, this same air, will again be outside. We simply do not become aware of it, for our muscles and bones constantly support us, and their arrival and passing becomes known only in embryonic life and in death. But as beings of air we constantly carry air in us and then again release it to the outside, once again to be taken up by the world external to us, so that we become one with the whole movement, life, and being of air, and all that pertains to air, in that we are men of earth. The moment we enter the spiritual realm it no longer remains the same. At this moment we feel that we are inexorably drawn along with every outward breath, with every outward movement of breath. We are carried on the wings of the out-breathing air out into the far-off spaces of existence, into which the out-breathed air is dispersed. And then on breathing in, we take in spiritual beings, the spirits that live in the circling currents of air. We take them back into us. The spiritual world flows into us as we breathe in, and our own being is carried on the tide of our breathing out. Of course, it is not this way merely with all that pertains to air. It is the same, but to a still higher degree, with all that pertains to warmth. As we exist within the encircling air, in turn encircled by the earth [This was illustrated on the board with two white circles.], a creature transformed thereby into a man of air, it is also just so, but to a still higher degree, with the essence of warmth that encircles and pervades the earth, [Red was added.] with which we are one. And when, as we approach the spiritual world, we have the specific experience of spirituality flowing into us with the in-breath, and of our own essence dispersing out into the breadth of the world with the out-breath, thereby engaging in spiritual motion with in-breathing and out-breathing, we have just such an experience with the being of warmth, although felt much more intensively. For as we step up into the warmth, insofar as we ourselves are in the warmth element, we become more human. If we fall away from the warmth, we become less human. Whatever else drops out of the warmth, becoming something merely bounded by nature, we perceive it to be in such a place, as we say to ourselves, discerning it with inner soul filled with warmth, with the effective working spirit of warmth, we perceive it as inwardly related to our humanity. Then we feel that the climb up into the warmth is accompanied by a working spirit emplaced in the element of warmth, who addresses us so: “Through the element of warmth I give you your humanity. Through the element of cold I take away from you your humanity." And now let us bravely progress on to light, for we also move and live in light. We don't normally take note of it, because in customary awareness we have no idea that the inner movement of light is contained in our own thoughts, that each thought is collected light, collected light both for those physically able to see, and also collected light for those who are physically blind. The light is objective. The light is taken up not only by those physically able to see. The light is also taken up by those who are physically blind, when they think. The thought held fast within, the thought to which we are inwardly attached, is ever-present light within. And so, we may say, as we approach the Guardian of the Threshold, forewarned just so by the Guardian of the Threshold himself: "Human being, in your thinking, your existence is not in you, it is in the light; human being, in your feeling, your existence is not in you, it is in the warmth; human being, in your willing, your existence is not in you, it is in the air.” Think about it, that your thinking is none other than your experience of light welling up and interconnecting with the world. Think also, that your feeling is none other than the coming-into-effect of the warmth-element of all that is interwoven and is alive. And think finally, that your willing is none other than the coming into effect in the air-element of all that is interwoven and is alive. All this must be taken seriously in full awareness, that before the Guardian of the Threshold one's world elements will be split apart, that one will no longer be able to self-assuredly hold one's essence together, as one holds it together, dark and chaotic, in customary awareness. And this is the great experience, and leads to the introductory insight, the insight that you may cease your serious holding of the idea that you are encased in your head. Certainly, it is merely an indication of what we are as human beings. But it is most certainly an illusion, in the light of spiritual awareness, that all seems to be concentrated inside the head, for a human being is as large as the entire surrounding world. One's thoughts are as wide as the light; one's feelings are as wide as the warmth; one's willing is as wide as the air. And if a highly developed being, highly developed in the area of awareness, were to descend from some other celestial body, it would speak to a person in quite a different way than people on the earth remaining in customary awareness speak with one another. Such a being would say that the light interwoven about the earth is differentiated. [Around the air and warmth circles, an envelope of light was drawn in gold.] Many individual differentiated beings at the summit of inter-connectivity dwell there within the light. One must picture it in such a way, that within the light of the earth, surrounding the earth, interwoven and vibrant upon the earth, all in a space, many such interconnected beings have their existence, as many as there are people upon the earth. They are all arrayed in the realm of the light of earth. And for such a being, all thoughts that come down to earth into the lonely heads of earth, all the thoughts of mankind, are in this envelope of light, they dwell within the interwoven light of the earth. And all feelings dwell within the envelope of warmth, and all willing dwells within the atmosphere, in the envelope of air. Then such a being would say: that just there, purely, qualitatively, I have sorted out a being. That it is there, is shown to me through a body, “body A," and another, again within the entire surrounding envelope, is shown to me through another body, “body B," and so forth. [In the gold were drawn two compact inclusions "A" and "B."] These are the outward markings, indicating that something is there. The human reality is to put it all together, an intertwining encirclement of the earth in light, warmth, and air. [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] For those who really come before the Guardian of the Threshold, this is not speculation, but experience. And therein lies spiritual progression, in a person's being awake in uniting with the encircling world. A person needs to do it and not just talk about it theoretically. It is certainly not some sort of deep mystical speculation, speaking about becoming one with the world. A person may have his eye only on the thought, and not begin to actually become inwardly aware of the experience, but in actuality when he thinks, he literally lives in the entire light of the earth, he becomes one with the entire light of the earth, and he thereby, in becoming one with the entire light of the earth, rises as a human being into a godlike-spiritual existence. He effectively reaches out through all the pores of his skin to become one with the being of earth itself, and in like manner with other parts of his corporeal body. This is certainly, of all that will really lead to a relationship with the spiritual world, this is certainly what must be grasped in a completely sincere manner. Now please take note, at first the light must work with moral effect. And a person must become aware of his situation concerning the light, for the light becomes related to him in esoterically experiencing the world. But then stepping forth quite clearly for a person, in the blink of the eye the moment a person steps up to the Threshold, is the awareness that light is locked into the nature of being, and also that it has to engage in a pitched battle with the dark powers. Light and darkness there will be real. And something makes its appearance there, confronting a person, by means of which he says to himself, "When I go out with my thinking fully into the light, then I am lost in the light.” For the moment that I go out into the light with my thinking, the beings of light gather me up, and say to me: "Human being, we will no longer let you go, we will hold you within our midst." This applies to the will of these beings of light. Through a person's thinking, the beings of light wish to draw the person into themselves, to make the person one with the light, to tear him away from all the powers of earth, and to interweave him into the light. Around us there are most certainly beings of light, which in their own way wish to carry a person off and away from the earth, and wish to interweave him with the sunlight welling up around the earth. They are living there, these beings of light, in the circumference of the earth, and are saying: "Human, you should not remain with your soul in your body. In the morning with the first rays of the sun you should shine out radiant with the light of the earth. With the evening's glow you should also set, and so as light you should encircle the earth!" Ever and again, we feel the allurement of these beings of light. The moment one approaches the Threshold, he will be aware there of the allurement of these beings of light and of their wish to draw him out and away from the earth. It will be clear to him that it is not worthy of a person to remain within the fetters of earth, through heaviness to be fettered to the earth. They wish to take him up into the brilliance of the sun. For customary awareness, the sun certainly shines overhead, and we stand down here as men and women and allow the sun to shine upon us. For developed awareness, the sun stands in the heavens as the great allurer, which wishes us always to become one with its light, which wishes to rip us loose from the earth, and which forever whispers in our ear, "O Man, you need not remain upon the earth, you yourself are able to have your being in the radiance of light. Then you will shine upon and be able to bring joy to the earth. Then you will no longer need the earth to shine upon you and bring you joy." Such is the nature of being, entered upon by our encounter with the Guardian of the Threshold, that the natural world, previously resting outside us, and in customary awareness making no demands on us, this natural world achieves the ability to speak to us in tones of morality. The natural world bursts upon the scene, and even as the sun, bursts upon us as an allurer. What was just now peaceful shining sunlight, well, it becomes alluring speech, becomes ensnarement, becomes temptation. And this first characterization, as we become aware of sunlight, of the spirituality that is woven into and living in sunlight, this first characterization is that within the light of the sun appear to us the allurers, the temptation-beings, who wish to carry us out and away from the earth. And these legions of beings are in continual battle with the others, with those constituted within the earth, within darkness. And when we are caught up in the extreme of the moment, as without doubt we will be, for experiences before the Guardian of the Threshold are without doubt absolutely serious, deeply penetrating, and soul-gripping, when we are caught up in this and become aware of how alluring the sunlight is through its beings of light, then we will draw back from it, that is if we remember that we should still be human beings. And we cannot afford to lose this memory. If we lose it, then as we continue to live out our physical life upon the earth, in a certain way, we will be partially lame in our souls. When we become aware of the allurement of the sunlight, however, and correspondingly turn to the other side, in turning away from this allurement we will find peace in the darkness, the darkness with which the light forever fights. And were we to swing out of the light into the darkness, then we would fall into the opposite extreme. This self of darkness threatens us, would carry us down and out of the bright shining sunlight on the one side of existence-awareness. This self of darkness threatens to make us solitary, severed from all the rest of existence. As human beings, we can live only in equilibrium between the light and the darkness. That is the great experience before the Guardian of the Threshold, that we are confronted on one side by the allurement of light, and on the other side by the power of darkness to induce in a person a loss of self. Light and darkness become moral powers, and have moral authority over us. And we humans must say to ourselves, that it is perilous to look upon the pure light, and also perilous to look upon the pure darkness. And we reach an inner state of calmness at the Threshold, we see how the instrumental gods, the good gods, the gods of normal progression, reveal the light in brilliant yellows and brilliant reds, and then we know that we can no longer be lost to the earth. We will become aware of the light, we will not be lured into blindness, but rather we will become aware of spirit-colors in the revealed light. It is just as perilous giving in to pure darkness. And we will become inwardly free if we do not merely confront the pure black darkness in the land of spirits, but rather if we confront the illuminated darkness in shades of violet and blue. Shades of yellow and gold say to us in the land of spirits: "Through allurement the light will not be able to lift your soul away from the earth.” Shades of violet and blue say to us: "The darkness will not be able to overwhelm your soul. You will be able to hold yourself firm against the effects of the heaviness of earth."These are the experiences as nature and morality grow together as one, when light and darkness become bound into the nature of being. And without light and darkness becoming bound into the nature of being, we would not become aware of the true nature of thinking. That is what we should hear in the words that the Guardian of the Threshold speaks, as we encounter him with our thinking that has become independent and separate in our soul-life.
In this we become aware of the duality, within which one is placed and amidst which one must find the balance, the harmony, in thinking. [This stanza was now written on the blackboard.]
One must with vigor take up the sort of impulse which can emerge from such words. With vigorous thinking, a person must learn from the surrounding light, must take to heart the surrounding darkness. The light will most certainly be arrayed, suffused with colors. A person must seek a balanced unity in spiritual beholding, as thinking shifts in this fight between light and darkness, for when it comes to the light, it will effectively be taken outward, will be taken up, will be interwoven within the light, and when it comes to the darkness, it will disappear. And in order to experience such a thing, my friends, have courage, inner courage. If a person does not yet say to himself that he needs courage, and so denies his need for courage, then without doubt he does not know what it entails. For he thinks he would need courage to allow his finger to be cut off, but he needs no courage to allow his disconnected thinking to stream about, within the maelstrom with which he is gripped, when it is stretched out in the fight between light and darkness. And in this arena, it will always be so. Only in this way is knowledge gained, of that which always is, and that a person can become aware of. In every waking moment a person’s thinking is certainly in danger, due to certain spiritual beings surrounding our corporeality. It has been known in each era, in each century, that for humanity it is possible for light to prevail over darkness, or for darkness to prevail over light. Yes, my friends, for human beings in customary awareness, life appears as danger-free as for the sleepwalker, whose time has not yet been called, and so never falls down. The person who really observes life, however, is aware of the struggle, and he really can't say in all certainty, whether light or darkness will have prevailed in victory in a hundred years, or whether future generations of men and women upon the earth will even consciously exist in a human-worthy existence-awareness. And he may come to know why such catastrophes in the prior development of mankind on earth have not come to completion. I can utilize yet another analogy. If you see a tightrope walker on a rope, then you are aware that at any moment he may fall down to the right or to the left. That you walk on such a rope in your soul, and that everyone can crash down to the left or to the right in soul, of this there is no awareness in customary life, because one does not see the abyss to the right and to the left. But it is there. That is the good granted to people by the Guardian of the Threshold, that he does not allow this abyss to be visible, until by means of his own admonitions various people are ready for it. Moreover, this was always the secret of all mystery schools of all times, that someone would be made aware of this abyss, and would thereby become enabled to acquire the initial forces that are necessary for knowledge of the real world. As it is with light in respect to thinking, so is it with warmth in respect to feeling. Whoever comes before the Guardian of the Threshold with respect to feeling, that person will become aware that he enters into a battle between warmth and cold, that the warmth continually is an allurement to our feelings, for it would like to soak these feelings up into itself. As the beings of light, the Luciferic beings, in a certain sense would have us fly away from the earth to the light, so will the Luciferic beings of warmth soak up our feelings in the general universal warmth. All the feelings of mankind would drop away from mankind and become soaked up in the general universal warmth. And it is alluring on the basis of being right at hand, which the recipient of this introductory knowledge becomes aware of when he arrives with his feelings at the Threshold, and as the beings of warmth appear, and in overabundance of exuberance would give to a person what is certainly his element, in which he lives, namely warmth. Insofar as one becomes aware of it, however, as he steps bravely up to the Threshold, and these beings of warmth appear, he becomes warm, warm, warm, he becomes fully the warmth himself, he flies up into the warmth, he rises into the throes of lust, and that is the allurement. All this gushes forth through a person, without end. A person must know all about this. For without a person knowing that the warmth-lust allurement is there, it is unlikely that he will attain a clear view of the land of spirits. And the enemies of these Luciferic beings of warmth are the Ahrimanic beings of cold. These Ahrimanic beings of cold, they draw a person on, until an awareness has been acquired of how dangerous it is to float within the limbo of lust-warmth. The person would like to dive into the healing of the cold ones, and so he is propelled into the other extreme, where the cold ones harden him. And then arises, when the cold ones bring a person into this situation, into this condition, then arises unending pain, which is at the same time physical pain. The physical and the psychic, the material and the spiritual become a unity. The human experiences the cold taking claim to his whole being, as if being torn to pieces in immeasurable pain. That this stands behind a person, that a person certainly lives continuing on within this struggle between warmth and cold, that is what a person should in turn make clear to himself by means of the admonition of the Guardian, in regard to his feelings. [The second stanza was written on the blackboard at this time.]
Concerning the will, a person plunges into a world that seems to lie right near to us. It really is near. It is the world of the air, the world that supports our process of breathing. A person does not suspect how inwardly changed the human will is with this air, for our willing depends on our breathing. And within the air, my friends, lies life and death, lies enlivened oxygen, and lies death-embracing nitrogen. There we have it, I would like to say, fast in hand. And the chemist says, in dreadfully untruthful abstraction, that the air consists of oxygen and nitrogen. And yes, so long as a person abides in customary awareness, he may say just oxygen and nitrogen. Should a person step before the Guardian of the Threshold, however, one thing will be clear to him, that oxygen is the offering of spiritual beings of clarion calling, the very spiritual beings who have given life to mankind. Nitrogen, moreover, is also the external offering of spiritual beings of clarion calling, of the spiritual beings who have given mankind death, the death, also, which, at every waking moment of our lives when we are thinking, when we are developing our lives of soul, is partially held at bay, and is overcome in us. In the air a battle rages. The Luciferic oxygen-spirits battle there with the Ahrimanic nitrogen-spirits. If the Threshold is approached abstractly, as abstractly as a chemist, then the air is a mixture of oxygen and nitrogen. But as one approaches the Threshold in reality, it is composed of Ahriman and Lucifer, for the oxygen is the external face of Lucifer, and the nitrogen is the external face of Ahriman. And a battle is being fought in the air. This battle is concealed from customary illusory awareness. One comes to it as one approaches the Threshold. And just there, at all times, when one ought to join that which lives in the oxygen-spirits, that which lives in the life-elements, when one should bind his will to the creativity of gods, when one should be moved by the oxygen-spirits to valor, just then the danger appears, for a person may be taken away, taken away with his whole creativity from the creativity of the gods, so that a person might cease to be human, and that what one has as force of will from the spiritual world will be taken into the service of the Luciferic world. And if a person now turns to the contralateral side, then the enticement of the nitrogenous Ahrimanic powers appears. Then what rules as death in airy elemental forces allures a person. Positioned there is not merely the death that a person confronts purely in the physical, bearing no real relationship to a person, but if a person were to come into a relationship with this death, he would begin by holding onto this death as something to be observed, then as something to be in union with, and then as something never again to be parted from. Whenever with elementary force of life the spirits wish to descend upon someone, so that their deeds are carried over as the deeds of the person, one will be thrown, in accordance with the contralateral side, the side of the Ahrimanic nitrogenous spirits, one will be thrown into the nothingness of life. One is cramped, and instead of being able to act, one is cramped within oneself. Ever again a person is positioned between these two opposites, which he must become aware of in regard to his will. [The third stanza was now written on the blackboard.]
My friends, if a person would now say, "I would certainly rather avoid this awareness altogether! Why should I take this on, this standing before the Guardian of the Threshold, when such things are paraded before me, such things that encase a person in a way that hardly seems beneficial. Can it be fruitful for a person to become aware of these frightful truths?" It is obvious that a person raises this objection in complacency, specifically when he asks, "Why should someone get caught up in such truths?" If a person says this in this way, he is certainly saying just what he would rather not want to know about. But my dear friends, the challenge of the present time is this, that a person should penetrate to true reality, that a person should not cower in fright before true reality, that he should penetrate to true reality, so that he can thereby come into union with those who in certainty have accounted for his being. For although we could, so long as we travel in this short life upon the earth, hold our heads in the sand and know nothing of these truths, we really may no longer do this, as we would have done in another era of time, in which a person would flourish after death, even if in life on earth he were not to acquire any awareness of what he will experience after death. And how will it be after death? When a person walks through the portal of death, with his awareness still intact, looks back, and the retrospection begins to come into his awareness, various high spiritual beings whisper gently within this retrospection, as if there in muted overtones. One looks back, in the couple of days past one's death, during the etheric body's dispersal out into the general etheric realm; as one looks back, looking upon the pictures of the life spent on earth, certain spirits whisper there within.
And just then a person knows, that this is a reality, that one thing or another can happen, if one does not find a course through the middle, but instead finds a course to the right or to the left. And always, having completed the time of sleep after death, which does not linger very long, when a person enters into the region of awareness wherein he wanders for a time equal to a third of his life on earth, wandering through the life he has just lived on earth, as has been described in general anthroposophical dissertations, then approaching a person, there where the awareness of this life-retrospection begins, is this actual experience. But always, ever and ever again, as I may say, in walking past the milestones of this experience, the admonishing spirits loom and speak to us.
This has been referred to quite often, what is asked here, in regard to the deceased who have stood near you, as to the attitude you should have in thoughts of the deceased, which for instance might convey the sense of, "I send my love to you, it will warm your chill, and ease your heat," because throughout the backward viewing of the linked events of life, warmth and cold play just this role. But it is also being pointed out to us, that this selfsame role continually directs the time there. These things are absolute complete realities. And when we pass beyond this experience of backward-looking, into the experience of being free in the land of spirits, preparing for the next earthly life, then ever and again along the milestones of this experience the admonishing spirits appear and call out to us without end.
There the striving is an obvious reality, one can veer right, or left.
My dear friends, when the human being still possessed an instinctive clairvoyance, then it was true, that when he passed through the portal of death, then straightaway, through this instinctive clairvoyance, he could also understand the words so spoken to him in the three partitions of his life after death. During the era of time through which he has had to pass in order to gain freedom for himself, it became less and less possible for him to understand the things that were being addressed to him there. And now we live in an era in which human beings, if they have not been made aware of the sense of these words during earthly life, will come upon these words addressed to them in the language of the spirits, and will not understand them. This is how it is, this may happen to a person, when he is engaged in living the future, and is going through the world he must traverse, where these words will be addressed to him, and he cannot understand them, and must live through the agony of this lack of understanding. And all the agonies of this lack of understanding, what do they indicate? They indicate the ever-growing undercurrent of fear within one's soul that the connection to the spiritual powers of creation will be lost, and at the end of one's days the powers will not be there to which one owes his existence, but rather among unknown powers the wellsprings of his humanity will be lost. Delineated and flowing through and through the esoteric, my friends, is not mere instruction, not mere theory, but as delineated herein one comes to confront and deal with the really serious concerns of life. And whoever immerses himself in the esoteric immerses not in lessons, not in theory, but immerses in life. Becoming aware of the meaning of life is only the external revelation, for behind every hour of study is the spiritual world. We do not penetrate so far when we chafe within what lies within such words themselves. As we become deeply engrossed in such words in meditation however, then our thinking, feeling, and willing will grow strong, then our thinking, feeling, and willing will be in position to seize the spirit, which we must undertake as human beings, to really seize the spirit. [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]
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| 270. Esoteric Instructions: Sixth Lesson
21 Mar 1924, Dornach Translated by John Riedel |
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| And then the feeling will come to you, that threatening you is not only the danger of sinking down and under into animality, but also the danger of living in the weakened awareness of a plant, of sleeping, of dreaming. |
| As a general rule, to attain what is best for our spiritual progression, is to undergo something that takes us down and under. When we encounter something that takes us down and under, as this fear of one's own animality appears, when we overcome this, when we metamorphose it by an inner action, in courage of the soul, then it will become the impetus to a higher human state of being. |
| These are the three admonitions concerning the underworld, the world of the lower elements, addressed by the Guardian of the Threshold to whomever comes to the Threshold. |
| 270. Esoteric Instructions: Sixth Lesson
21 Mar 1924, Dornach Translated by John Riedel |
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My dear friends! Most certainly the truths which a person can learn from the Guardian of the Threshold are what we are confronting in these present considerations. And contained within the incessant admonitions, most certainly, is that a person becomes aware, just how he progresses soulfully in spiritual life, as he himself brings to awareness his true relationship to the world. To bring one’s true relationship to the world to awareness, first you let yourself become acquainted with the world, which is around about yourself in the kingdoms of nature, the kingdoms of nature lying external to your own existence. Focus on your relationship with the animal, the plant, and the mineral kingdoms. Through this relationship you will be afforded the opportunity at first to become acquainted with plants, animals, and minerals. Then you may go on as well to marvel at them, and then to bending them to the unfolding of your will-impulses, and so forth. A person becomes acquainted with this entire world as his external world, and in customary awareness will be but little aware of how he most certainly has grown up and come out of this entire world, and of how there is a deep kinship between himself and this entire world. Alone, when one allows one’s gaze to sweep around and about over this external world, alone a person simply cannot feel this kinship with the realms of the world. One must stride forward to becoming acquainted with the feeling of oneself being out there in the world. And then absolutely, one may not, when one becomes acquainted with the feeling of oneself being out there in the world, then absolutely a person may not, my friends, come to a stop there, seeing things in this manner, as they present themselves to an external viewpoint, then a person must return to exactly that which reveals itself between things. Since the onset of the recent phase of the development of mankind, a person gazes only minimally at what is revealed in the relationship between things. One gazes externally at the entities of the three kingdoms of nature, but my friends, it is well known that at the outset one has to see behind the kingdoms of nature, into what one calls the world of the elementals. We may say that our feet are planted firmly on the fixed earth. [The word was written on the blackboard.]
And whatever fixed as earth holds our feet up, most certainly also sends forth its substance into animals, plants, minerals, and into our physical human bodies. And when we lift our view up from the floor underneath our feet, observing what affects us at our own level, certainly right at hand is something with the quality not merely of air, but of airy substance permeated with the watery element. Indeed, people's manner of life on the earth has evolved, so that now this watery element is found finely dispersed within the air perceived around about oneself. This must first be concentrated, consolidated for the purposes of one's own organism, although one can also say that a person also lives within this watery element. [Above earth was written the second word.]
And also, a person lives in the air-formative element, in which he has to carry out his breathing. [Above earth was written the third word.]
In the moment, as we look upon these elements, we may not say, as we must say in regard to the entities of the kingdoms of nature, that we see them before us in sharp contour. We do see the individual, fixed, and sharply contoured bodies, although from the fixed as such, from the earthly, we may not say, that we live within it. We are in relationship with the earth, nevertheless we have become particularly disconnected from it. Whatever belongs to our own selves, we certainly do not separate from anything else. A dish or a stool, standing external to ourselves, we distinguish from ourselves, but whatever is in us, we don't look upon as existing in discrete bordering regions. We don't look upon our lungs or our heart as being self-contained beyond our borders. Only when we approach the matter by way of transforming it into objects, as in anatomy, do we look upon ourselves in this way. In reality, just as we normally are in relationship to our own bodies, this is how we are related in an immensely comprehensive way with what and whatever the elements are. We live in earth, we live in water, we live in air, and we live in warmth. They belong to us. They are too close to us to be understood as sharply contoured objects of the world. Let us attend once more to what is around about us as the elemental world, and, at the same time, is also within us. We must regard it so, as both the substance of the world and as our own substance. In this sense we have been focusing on substances that we designate as earth, that we designate as water, that we designate as air, that we designate as warmth.[Over the word air, the next word was written.]
When we go out further, out, out into the thick substances of the etheric beyond warmth, which is also most certainly etheric, in this manner we come to light, [Over the word warmth, the next word was written.]
and into the arena that we have always named by the dry, abstract phrase the chemical ether and its processes. We will call it this today, for in this way the orderliness of the world will be called forth, the configuration of the world will be called forth, and we will designate at the same time the great chemism of the cosmos, world configuration, or world forming. It is difficult, concerning this, to find an appropriate designation. [Over the word light, the next word was written.] And specifying what is the highest to be designated in the etheric, we will then call that the life of the world, the living ether, the world life. [Over world configuration the next word was written.]
Now although we have already received the impression here in the previous Class lessons, my friends, that a person, as he actually lives on the earth, certainly does not stand in inner relationship to all of these elements in the same manner, it must be pointed to specifically that a person lives inwardly fully in relationship only with the element of warmth. [The word warmth on the blackboard was cross-marked with red chalk.] It is essential for striding ahead in the spirit to be fully versed in this matter. So, think for a moment, how without any intermediary agent, how without mediation, but rather how directly one feels and is affected by warmth and cold. You certainly take note of the starkly contrasting natures of warmth and cold. But with what passes before you in the encircling air, for example, you don't make such an immediate, direct connection. Initially the air being good or bad is only noticed through its intermediate effects on one's organism. And just so, it is just so with the effects of light. In this way a person stands not immediate, but very close to air and light. [The words air and light were cross-marked with gold.] He stands extraordinarily close to them. But already we notice that among the denser elements, a person characteristically is more distant from the watery element, in spite of being related. Yet, the watery element is still quite deeply related with human life. [The word water was cross-marked with blue.] In looking back over an extremely animated but troubling dream, my dear friends, let us attempt to see how such a troubling dream represents one's perspiration, the secretions of one's watery element. Take note of the watery element's important role in sleep, in which the secretions of the watery element play such a remarkable part. A person lives in the watery element. Whatever exists in his vicinity as dispersed fluid is quite significant for him, but has none of the immediate quality of warmth. Whether it is warm or cold, a person feels it as his own person. He might be cold, or he might be hot. What occurs for instance, if we are enveloped in fog, is that the fogbank is just as significant for us, but the effect on our inner human nature is indirect, and is not so starkly evident for normal awareness. For just then, as we are enveloped in fog, then in a certain way our own watery element is enmeshed with the watery element in the external world. And we feel in this very gentle transition of our watery element into the watery element of the external world, which is not felt in the transition of our watery element into dry external air, we feel in this transition that we are somehow one with the entire cosmos. Dry air allows us to remain more inward in feeling our human nature, but air heavy with water allows us to feel our unity with the cosmos. In this day and age, we have no schooling in such things. I have dealt with this in detail previously in the Hague, and it was published (this intimate unity of a person with the elements). It is really there, and it belongs to the esoteric path of life, this becoming aware in practicality of such intimate unity. Still deeper, may I say, in the subconscious, lies a person's relationship with the earthly element. [The word earth was cross-marked with blue.] What does a person know with certainty of his relationship with the earthly element? He knows that salt is acrid, and that sugar is sweet. This is part of the earthly element. Although what salt and sugar accomplish in his organism in significant metamorphosis, how he is positioned in a unity with the cosmos in the dissolution of sugar, or withdrawn into his organism with salt, how certain forces entering in from the cosmos affect the organism when the sweetness of sugar rolls through our body, is really noticed by a person only in the minimally-connected reflex of salt and sugar on the tongue. There are processes of a deeper nature at work. In a manner of speaking the whole world has opened its doors to certain forces when sugar dissolves on a person's tongue and flows through his organism. And always, just as the thicker elements affect a person indirectly, the thinner etheric elements world-chemical-ether and world living also have an indirect effect on a person, a concealed effect. [The words world-chemism and world living were cross-marked with blue.] The most obvious effect on a person comes from the most centrally located element, warmth. Next at hand for customary awareness are the effects of light and air. In the subconscious, however, lie the effects on the one side of water and earth, and on the other side of life and chemical gestalt of the world, chemical gestalt in the cosmos. This being so, then during one's life on earth a person should be aware that he most certainly lives in his human state in these middle elements [air, warmth, light were indicated on the board], and that his awareness draws on his relationship with water and earth, and with world chemism and world living. Since this was always so, back when the old instinctive awareness had dominion, in which always a bit of clairvoyance was mixed, in the mysteries back then, the students at the proper stage of their development received the following injunction: trust in fire, trust in air, trust also in light, yet become mindful of the underworld of water and earth, become mindful of the over-world of the gestalt of world chemism and world life. For even as relations, as they are so firmly emplaced down in the unconscious, that just so in world living and world chemism the allurement of Lucifer may present itself, and out of earth and water the seduction of Ahriman. [The words Lucifer and Ahriman were written down, and so the schematic was complete.] [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] Light—Warmth—Air Water, Earth—Ahriman And esoteric guidance in the mysteries has always maintained that a person should find the proper relationship with these elements, that in the proper way he should feel his relationship with the elements. When a person ascends to imaginative living, then he feels this relationship with the elements immediately. In customary awareness we look about and get to know as external to us the presentation of animals, plants, and minerals. If we get to know the elements in their relationship with us we really may no longer just look about at the world, but must also feel inwardly, live inwardly in the very things that are in us and in the world at the same time. For as we ascend to imaginative living, we can feel our kinship with the elements. And so, if we have developed this feeling properly, we formulate for ourselves a strong inner stance. And contained within the self-development of this stance is most certainly progressive, effective, and genuine human self-awareness. One becomes aware at the beginning only that he is human, when after a fashion he is let out into the world with which he is so inwardly interconnected, into this world in which he stands alone, in which the plants, animals, and minerals stand apart from us as strangers. But were one through an imaginative experience to become aware of his kinship with the earth, then one would feel himself no longer to be in his humanity, but he would feel himself in his animality, he would then feel his inner human kinship with the multiplicity of beings of animal nature, of animality. And if a person feels himself united with the water-existence on earth, then he becomes aware: yes, you are actually related, are akin to plant-nature. It is something in you, something likewise sleeping, likewise dreaming in the world, just as it is in plant-nature. And if a person were to become aware of his kinship with the air, then he would feel the mineral existence in himself. He would feel as he does when some sort of mineral preparation on his whole skin fills him totally within. A person feels, as soon as he with his imagination enters the world of the elements, that he is related, is akin to animal, plant, and crystal. And a person feels quite different in regard to these realms of nature, for he feels a self-other unity, a belonging together. He feels the inner kinship which he has with these realms, somewhat in the following manner. One looks about on the animal realm. One observes the beasts of burden, as they slowly place one foot in front of the other. One observes the vibrant animals, such as the flittering birds. One observes everything in the nature of animals that is in motion, pervading the world with movement out of its own being. Then a person says to himself, that all that rules in the innermost being of the animal nature is evidently the same, manifestly the same, as his own will. And he feels the kinship of his own will with the nature of animals. At the same time, however, one feels something further. A person becomes afraid of himself. And what would be preferable, soon after entering the esoteric life when a person feels this fear of himself, would be not to immediately be held back by it, but by means of it to acquire a higher craft of soul. But even before, when someone becomes aware that actually this human structure is in this manner in us, even as we stand alone with nature’s realm external to us, even as we are able to observe it externally, then one feels that the earth, in its elemental reality, simply does not yet turn us into human beings, but into animals. There we are animal. By virtue of earth, we are animal. And as the earthen is always there, so ever at hand is the danger that we may sink down into animal nature. If and when one considers this, not just with abstract theoretical knowledge, as the person of today is used to, but rather feels it, then one comes to fear that at any moment he may fall down and under into animal nature. But at the same time this fear bolsters, encourages one henceforth, to wish to raise oneself above this animality, to strike out from a life in the elements, and in spite of the alien world all around, nevertheless to strike out at once into a life of humanity. Recognizing your relation to the world, recognizing it with feeling, that is just the thing that leads into real esotericism. And furthermore, when a person feels his kinship with the water-world, the water-element, then he becomes aware that on the ways of water we would not be as humans are, for we would be like plants. And our feelings, that have a certain dreamy quality, as I have often delineated to you in other venues, my friends, our feelings forthwith would have the tendency to be of the quality of plants. Now try most intimately to delve into your most gentle feelings, and you will be able to experience the plant-quality of the life of feelings. And then the feeling will come to you, that threatening you is not only the danger of sinking down and under into animality, but also the danger of living in the weakened awareness of a plant, of sleeping, of dreaming. But this feeling of weakness, albeit sitting in the depths of awareness, must be transformed in your feelings, in order for you to awaken into human existence. Fear of animality must be transformed with courage, in order to lift oneself up to the human. The feeling of weakness in plant existence must be transformed with an inner call to awaken, to bring oneself with inner force into the world of the awakened human. And were someone to become aware of living in the ways of air, then, if he becomes aware of it, then he observes that in effect all thinking, unknown to humanity, that in effect all thinking is none other than rarefied breathing. Thinking is rarefied breathing. The thoughts within which we live are through and through processes of rarefied breathing. Inflowing breathing, mid-breath pausing, and out-breathing are working, I might say, on the one side by groping about in our circulation of blood, although on the other side by the rarefied vibrations of the brain-organ. And as breathing continues on in the brain-organ it becomes thinking in the physical world. Sublimated breathing, breathing becoming sublime, is what thinking is. Whoever strides ahead into imagination certainly no longer trusts merely to this sort of abstract reasoning, which with much else weak and flimsy lives in the brain. Whoever strides ahead into imagination perceives in-breathing as the broadening out of breath into the brain. He feels how the breath broadens itself out. When the breath spreads itself out, so that in a certain sense it is consummated, then cohesive ideas develop, cohesive conceptions. When the breath is otherwise consummated and wells up within, inwardly-moving conceptualizations arise. It is merely a refined breathing process, moving through us and welling up; we characterize it as conceptualization, as thinking. At once, however, as one is feeling, "I am breathing in, I draw the breath from around about into the brain, and I let the breath impinge upon my ear," so would he feel, "it presents itself to me as thoughts, these things that I perceive as tones, bells, and whistles. And as I let the breath beat upon my eyes, it presents itself in what I see as color. It is really the inner speech of the breath that takes its effect as concepts. When the breath, totally refined, beats on the organs of sensation, it produces concepts. But if one were to be aware of this, to be aware of himself at once as thinker and as breather, then one would feel this process of thinking, this refined breathing, as an organized mineral substance, as an organized stone or crystal, filling one up. You know that oxygen transforms itself in humans into carbonic acid. The connection with carbon in the finely-diffused multiply-branched arborization of the breath in human heads really displays itself there as an entrapment of carbonic acid. That is a process of mineralization. And the longer one lingers there, inwardly immersing oneself in carbon's entrapment of oxygen, in such measure may one grasp the mineralization process. One may grasp carbonic substance itself, the element carbon, the carbonic. And the carbonic is the Philosopher's Stone. Manifesting inwardly in human beings the carbonic is the Philosopher's Stone. You may glean much from the old instinctive clairvoyants, in how they described the Philosopher's Stone. You will find that all over the world they described the Philosopher's Stone, not known by the common man, yet everywhere to be found. One can discover it everywhere. A person can find it where it lies, waiting to be discovered. It is to be found on the earth. It is very exactly described, how one discovers the carbon substance by burning wood. It can be discovered everywhere, this Philosopher's Stone. Carbonized material is what it is. It is contained in the veins of coal in coal-mining operations. It is also contained in the rarified breathing process. In a person, however, it is a process of nature, this incinerating process of coal, of coal that is living, but still a process of mineralization. … [Here the rapid tempo of speech made stenography somewhat less than reliable.]] A person feels inwardly turned to stone …crystalized, mineralized in his mineral nature through this process in the life of the wafting air, as one feels implanted in his plant-nature through the life of the ways of water, and as one feels animated in his animal nature through this process in the life of the earth. This is what the Guardian gives to the human being in admonition, that a person should become aware of his relationship with the realms of nature. We have these admonitions from the Guardian of the Threshold for this reason, given to human beings as spoken meditative verse. If and when a person with deep emotion, with earnest sensitivity allows them to work on his heart and mind, then he will become somewhat aware of his kinship with the element of earth, which is related to his will, with the element of water, which is related to his feelings, and with the element of air, which in this manner, as I have just depicted for you, is related to his thinking, to his conceptualization. [Two lines were written on the blackboard.] You stride into earth being’s helm1 That remains totally unknown for customary awareness. Every time we exercise our will to do something, we actually clamber down into the element of earth. But customary awareness knows nothing of this. The moment this clambering down becomes known, the person is changed from humanity into animality, and appears to himself as some sort of animal, at least in the etheric gestalt, into which he is looking, he appears changed into some sort of animal. One certainly does not feel right away exactly like an elephant or exactly like an ox, but it will be so, to such an extent, for in the element of will, one can bring to expression the world of the ox, the world of the elephant, or the world of the eagle. [Three more lines were written.]
But such an admonition of the Guardian of the Threshold, my friends, is not there for the purpose of being taken up as an idea, as a theory. It is there in order to become experienced by all human beings. If a person looks into what is within the will, he will become aware of his own animality, then he will become consumed with self-fear, but all of this must metamorphose, in courage, in courage of soul. Then one comes a step further. Then he comes into the spiritual world. [The verse was continued on the blackboard.]
There we have the first clambering down and under, into that realm where the Ahrimanic powers work so strongly and effectively. Our proper attitude is shown to us at once by the appropriate declamation, the admonition of the Guardian of the Threshold. You stride into earth being’s helm As a general rule, to attain what is best for our spiritual progression, is to undergo something that takes us down and under. When we encounter something that takes us down and under, as this fear of one's own animality appears, when we overcome this, when we metamorphose it by an inner action, in courage of the soul, then it will become the impetus to a higher human state of being. We need this fear in order to move up and on in the spirit. The other clambering down, in the ways of water, we meet in the following admonition of the Guardian of the Threshold, for the words which I impart to you are the words of the Guardian of the Threshold, whom we meet in the following admonition.
The metamorphosis conversely of this sleepy dreamy way of feeling, when we clamber down and under in full awareness, will be for us to emerge as one awake. [The second stanza was now written on the board.]
And when a person feels his kinship with the airy being, even in customary awareness, then he feels his kinship truly. He does not have to clamber down so deeply into the unconscious. Nevertheless, there still is the scent of Ahrimanic allurement in this descent. And yes, when we are living in our memories, living in our thoughts of the past, we are inwardly communing with breathing. When we have rarefied customary breathing in thinking about what is in our surroundings, then admittedly there is no danger at hand. When memories arise, however, the breath working from inward out, then once again a danger is at hand, exactly when this danger is most easy to observe. And for this descent through thinking into reflection, into musing, in which we deal primarily with thinking of notions of the past, for this the Guardian of the Threshold gives us the following admonition. [The beginning of the third stanza was written on the board.]
One can do this, my friends, if with the same degree of inner activity, with energy, one arrays one thought upon another, much as a person does concerning external affairs. A person is used to exerting himself in moving a chair from one place to another. A person is not used to packing off a thought from one spot to another. He wants to think only along normal channels concerning external appearances, as things are given to him. He wants a book to display a succession of thoughts, he wants a newspaper to display a succession of thoughts, and he is satisfied when that is the case. It is just as if you were waiting expectantly, and rather than exerting your own will externally, deploying the force of your will, you were waiting to somehow be activated by an objective power, for example whenever you might want to move your arm to place it on a chair. It would be as if some sort of spirit were standing there and continually placing one of your legs in front of the other, so that you could walk. In one's train of thinking a person is just so, as it were, as if he were counting on one leg being placed in front of the other, in order to walk. [The next lines of the third stanza were written on the board and spoken.]
This is to become mineral-like, and whoever is not familiar with imagination, just does not know how mineral-hard customary thinking is. Customary thinking is hard as stone. One really feels the crusty abrasiveness of this thinking, once one has achieved entry into the spiritual world. Thinking is actually painful when it veers off into abstract forms. Whoever has spiritual life, can in any case still live with whatever emerges in thinking out of human feelings, with whatever emerges in thinking out of human impulses. He can live with himself, when animosities and scornful outbursts emerge externally out of human nature in thoughts, but he feels inwardly wounded by crusty abrasiveness, when the abstract thoughts of present-day civilization penetrate into his organization. What can be inflicted on present-day thoughts is such that even the sentence, "And intrinsic soul will threaten you as cold observing stone," does not make it clear. But when a person knowingly descends into the realm of memories, into the realm of the airy ways, when one’s breath is taken away, in and by the grasp of conceptualization, then it will be as I have depicted. But this inner death in thinking, this icy death, must in turn inflame us to a contrary force, even in thoughts it must call forth spirited vitality by means of inner force. [The stanza was completed on the board.]
These are the three admonitions concerning the underworld, the world of the lower elements, addressed by the Guardian of the Threshold to whomever comes to the Threshold. Here he portrays the human being’s need to become aware, if he would become a knower, of his inner kinship with the three realms of nature, how he must become aware through his kinship with the earth-beings of his animality and thereby of the nature of the animals in his vicinity, how he must become aware through his kinship with water-beings of his own plant-like nature, and thereby the nature of the plants in his vicinity, how he must become aware through his kinship with the air-beings of his own innate mineral-crystal-realm, his innate mineral-being, his innate stone-nature, and thereby the essential nature of the mineral realm in his vicinity. Fear, lassitude, and death, as the negative attributes, must thereby not just develop, but must metamorphose into the positives, into spirituality, leading into attributes of soul courage, awakening, and flaming exhilaration. This is indeed what the Guardian of the Threshold calls out step by step, first the inner feeling of fear in descending into animality, then the inner feeling of powerlessness in the lassitude of plant-existence, and then finally the yearning in the face of the chilling freezing consciousness of stone-existence, the yearning to develop exhilarating fire. So sounds forth the three-part admonition of the Guardian of the Threshold.
And as we come there [The lower part of the schematic was indicated.] into Ahriman's realm, and by means of the Guardian of the Threshold are admonished and rescued from the seductive art of Ahriman, so we press on to the other side, [The upper part of the schematic was indicated.] in which from where we stand in life on earth we will forge ahead into the esoteric, into light, world chemism, and world living. We absorb, we gather up the light. Usually, we do not immediately know that the light, when it flows in through the eyes, actually unites with the breath. Warmth of course lies in between. The breath of air unites with the light [The middle part of the schematic was indicated.] The conception evolves from the perception. We live in the light, in that we build thoughts for ourselves, and just so, in accordance with the other side, in accordance with the lower realms, we live in the air, in the breath. We hold thoughts in retention by means of the light. We don't realize it, but thoughts can live in us only if they are illuminated by light, if the breath is illuminated by light. For those who ascend through imagination, thinking is a gentle inspiration of breath, that, as the light is inwardly taken hold of, is fully illuminated, resplendent, vibrant. [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] There go the thinned-out waves of breathing. [Waves were drawn.] They start to glow in the light [yellow], for the light in spiritual science bestows significance on all that works primarily through the senses. Not only that which works effectively through the eyes, but also what works effectively in sound is light, and also what works effectively in the sense of taste, insofar as we have taken note of it and so it has come to light. All that we have taken note of through the senses has come to light, is light. But if and when we become aware of how this thinking, this having thoughts, is just rarefied breath, upon which light beats and interweaves, then it is most certainly so, as when a person wishes to observe the surface of the ocean, and on the surface of the ocean sees not just sunlight dancing off the waves [red on the yellow light reflection], but dwells there, catching the scent, feeling the weaving of the waves with the sheen of reflections, it is just so that all this may be taken to heart and mind, insofar as one experiences it inwardly. And here enters the allurement of Lucifer, for to some extent it is immensely beautiful, and to some extent induces an immense desire and an immense complacency. True inner lustful desire creeps over a person. He easily falls prey to the allurement, the seduction of Lucifer, who wishes to draw a person away from this world, into a world of beauty over which Lucifer himself has dominion. This allurement would wrestle a person away from the earthly elements and heave him up into the angelic, into the spiritual realm, so that after every sleep he would no longer descend into the physical body. In this manner enters the seduction of Lucifer, ever-so-much in contradistinction to the thicker elements, into which the Ahrimanic seduction enters. But it has been so arranged, that just here we hear the admonition of the Guardian of the Threshold, and are not drawn into this realm without holding fast to the determination never to forget the many needs, the many woes of earth. Then our bonding with earth existence, that of course we must wander through, will be strongly established. And so sounds forth the admonition of the Guardian of the Threshold.
[The first stanza of this mantra was now written on the board.]
For a person will be totally changed through the imagination of the appearance of light, with thoughts no longer held in their abstraction, but rather as light playing over the sweep of breath.
As we ascend further into the etheric element, then the Luciferic allurement becomes still more intense. Coming into consideration now, are not just our thoughts, in which it is comparatively easy for us to find our way, but rather the dim element of feelings. For the only part a person holds of the gestalt of world-forming-design, which is working and weaving cosmically in the chemical ether, the only substantial part he holds fast to is in his feelings. And when he then imaginatively ascends out into the flow of this world chemistry, it is certainly not the way it is in a jovial philistine narrow-minded earth-chemistry laboratory, where the chemist stands by the laboratory table and all is external to him, but in ascending he must, the person must, in all the blending and separating of the stuff coming into himself, he must himself be drawn in. So he becomes himself a cosmic chemist. His own chemical processing is interwoven there, and in this existence, interwoven with the gestalt of world-forming design, he feels the Luciferic allurement in the design as a powerless becoming. For the person is thrown into a sort of willful lustful desire, knowing that he can indeed be spirit. He will no longer return, if he does not recollect the necessary tones of earth. He will be made powerless, in not being able to come again into his humanity. He must take great care in this soul-powerlessness, just as soon as he approaches this world, in regard to the love he has acquired for all that is of value on the earth, for the value of the earth.
so says the Guardian of the Threshold:
[The second stanza was now written on the board.]
that comes at this level from Lucifer
A person can only attain his cosmic intent by becoming angelic at the proper time. During the Jupiter evolution the man of today will certainly ascend to angelic existence. Lucifer's seduction consists of affecting people out of time, trying to make them into angels still in the Earth evolution, into stunted angels. Then would the souls of men be lost, and a stunted angel-soul would emerge. So we should attend to the admonition of the Guardian of the Threshold.
The most intensive seduction is in the last element, in world life, when we ascend into global world life. We hold some of this fast within our will, but it is held as if in sleep, as I have often related to you. If it would be awakened in imagination, if we would be aware, instead of our well-circumscribed life on earth that is enclosed within our skin, of our experiencing world living, then we would be dead in an instant. For to live knowingly in the general earth-life, means undergoing death as an individual being. Universal life kills us, if and when we grasp it. Similar to the insect flying into a flame, entranced by the fire, by the light, and dying the instant it flies too close, in a similar manner individual life dies in the general world living, when it is entered knowingly with one's own spirit. And as the animal, out of an immense lustful desire, flutters into the flame, so does the person as an individual die in his spirit within the general, the cosmic life. We ought not to suddenly be thinking of ourselves venturing into this element, if we have not first built up in ourselves a god-devoted, a spirit-devoted earthly will, namely, for us to be fully aware, that upon the earth we carry out the intentions of the gods. If we infuse ourselves with this god-devoted will, up to the point of inner sacrificial fervent love, then we will not let ourselves be enticed into becoming degenerate angels. Instead, so long as human existence is essential for the being living in us, we will remain human. And so sounds forth the admonition of the Guardian of the Threshold.
[The third stanza was now written on the board.]
And so, we have here the three-part admonition of the Guardian of the Threshold concerning the upper tier [of the schematic], concerning the etheric elements.
It is the practice of recognition, of inner knowing, that will be brought to you in these lessons, my friends. And the things given to you in this way, you should take in and understand as a simple description of theoretical matters, but rather, in order to experience the heart of the matter, you must put it in its proper perspective. The actual and truthful perspective, is that everything said in these lessons is the specific instruction of the Guardian of the Threshold himself, emerging directly out of what a person can receive, in discussions with the Guardian of the Threshold. For the intention here in these Class lessons, my friends, is not to give theories. The intention is to allow the spiritual world itself to speak. This was spoken about in the very first lesson, about how this school should be seen as having been established by the spiritual world itself. This has been the nature of all mystery schools. In mystery schools people speak as entrusted by the spiritual guardianship of the world. And this must remain the nature of mystery schools. This is why it has been stipulated so strongly in earnest, that each and every participant in this class should make it come alive, and should enshrine it. Certainly no one can be a real member of this school of spiritual life without this serious demeanor. This is just what I would like to direct your attention to once again, quite seriously. Take up this school as having been constituted immediately out of the will of the spiritual world itself, which the school seeks merely to interpret in a manner proper for our period of time, for the era we have entered into, in which the darkness has passed and a light has once again come forth, a light that at first admittedly externalizes itself imperfectly upon the earth, as human beings still retain the old darkness. It is there however. And only those who understand that the light is there, will enter into the ways and means of this our spirit-school in the true sense. [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]
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| 270. Esoteric Instructions: First Lesson in Prague
03 Apr 1924, Prague Translated by John Riedel |
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| The school has been divided into Sections in order to meet the needs of those coming towards it, under the present circumstances of civilization, with the intention of carrying on their spiritual life within it. |
| The School of Spiritual Science will then also have a section for the spoken arts with music and eurythmy which will be led by Frau Dr. Steiner, a section for medicine under the leadership of Frau Dr. Ita Wegman, and a section for the sculptural arts under the leadership of Miss Maryon. Further there will be a section for something to which scarcely any attention is paid these days, to the detriment of our whole civilization, and that is the section for the fine arts under the leadership of Herr Albert Steffen. There will also be a section for astronomy and everything connected with it under the leadership of Fraulein Dr. |
| 270. Esoteric Instructions: First Lesson in Prague
03 Apr 1924, Prague Translated by John Riedel |
|---|
My dear Friends! The Anthroposophical Society having been founded in a new form during the recent Christmas Conference in Dornach, the teachings given in various groups of the former Anthroposophical Society are now intended to flow into what has since become the actual School of Spiritual Science. The school is intended to become a kind of center for the whole of the anthroposophical movement which is at work within the Anthroposophical Society. This School of Spiritual Science, due to the interrelationships of its most essential working groups, will certainly have its central point at the Goetheanum in Dornach, and efforts will be made naturally to seek and find ever-better formats not only within the Goetheanum, but also in extension for the friends of the anthroposophical movement all over the world who only occasionally can show up in person in Dornach. What I have to say to you during this lesson, as well as in the next esoteric lesson, must be considered to have been spoken to you, my dear friends, within the School of Spiritual Science. I want to begin, however, by mentioning a few matters concerning the constitution of the school. Those who decide to become members of this School, after having been members of the Anthroposophical Society for two years, enter into an obliga¬tion, in the spiritual sense. When issuing a membership card for the School of Spiritual Science, the leadership of the school will always endeavor to ascertain whether the person in question is capable of taking on a spiritual obligation of this kind. When a person becomes a member of the Anthroposophical Society, that person rightly expects to become acquainted with and to experience Anthroposophy. In a certain way they will get to know Anthroposophy. This is the very thing that has been made possible by the Christmas Foundation Conference at Dornach, for there is to be complete openness in this matter, and no particular obligations whatever will devolve upon members of the Anthroposophical Society. Whoever enters the School of Spiritual Science as a member, however, must from then on keep in mind that the central aspect of this School of Spiritual Science is to be the source of anthroposophical life now and for some time in the future. Anthroposophical life is founded certainly on what for all times has been known as secret inner knowing or secret science. But the word secret was never intended to describe all kinds of goings on in secret circles that must not be made known to the world. Specifically, it was meant to describe what belongs not to the external surrounding world, not to what is outside the human body, but rather this use of the word secret has really always been used to explain that the content expressed in esoteric schools has its source and origin in the deeply hidden inner being of man himself. Therefore, in contradistinction, it has been called secret instead of public. Secret certainly has the meaning of the actuality of inner knowing, and it is counted as secret since it is the actuality of inner knowing in one’s profound depths, in a person’s secret inner being, which comes to the fore as revelation. What basically comes from one’s deepest inner nature loses its proper significance, its proper appreciation, indeed its proper proprietary nature, when it is profaned, when it is in some fashion bandied about in public. What always happens on the broad stage of public disclosure, you can be sure, is that these things will not be taken up with the necessary sincerity, with the necessary dignity. It is, indeed, the first requirement laid upon those who approach esoteric schooling that they bring to it the deepest, the very deepest seriousness. This is how the School of Spiritual Science must be taken up, and this is why it requires its members to be truly genuine representatives of the anthroposophical world movement in every situation of their lives. This is the case to such an extent that the leadership of the school is obliged to exclude a member if in its opinion that member is not a representative in the right way. This is not intended to be a tyrannical regulation, my dear friends. It is merely a regulation that arises out of the principle that freedom must be met with freedom. If the leadership of the school is to administer it in the proper manner it must be allowed to stipulate with whom it wishes to conduct the affairs and carry the content of the school. That is why it is necessary to emphasize the seriousness with which those approaching the school must truly grasp Anthroposophy as a world movement. The school has been divided into Sections in order to meet the needs of those coming towards it, under the present circumstances of civilization, with the intention of carrying on their spiritual life within it. The teaching that I shall give during this session and the next should be seen as coming within the scope of the General Anthroposophical Section which, as well as the Education Section, I myself shall lead. The School of Spiritual Science will then also have a section for the spoken arts with music and eurythmy which will be led by Frau Dr. Steiner, a section for medicine under the leadership of Frau Dr. Ita Wegman, and a section for the sculptural arts under the leadership of Miss Maryon. Further there will be a section for something to which scarcely any attention is paid these days, to the detriment of our whole civilization, and that is the section for the fine arts under the leadership of Herr Albert Steffen. There will also be a section for astronomy and everything connected with it under the leadership of Fraulein Dr. Vreede, and also a section for the natural sciences under the leadership of Dr. Wachsmuth. Something else has also been established recently in response to a need, something about which little can be said as yet because it has been plunged into ferment, a fermenting element which the school intends to ensure will link itself in all honesty with the intentions of the Goetheanum. This is the section for promoting the spiritual life of young people, the section for the universal striving of today's youth, which is a part of the historical process. When observed objectively, it is perfectly clear that something new is coming into being here, although at present young people can only talk very unclearly about what it is they actually mean. To bring into clear consciousness what is for the moment still only expressed in all kinds of indeterminate feelings and the sense of something lacking, to gain a clear view of all this will be the aim of the section that I may call the section for the wisdom of youth. In this way the School of Spiritual Science seeks to bring esoteric life to each individual as something that is an extension of today's external culture. It is something for which the world has the profoundest longing, without actually realizing that what it is seeking is the very thing that is to live in the esoteric life of our School of Spiritual Science. We have absolutely no intention of imitating ordinary universities in any way by doing what they do in a somewhat different form. This was attempted during the period when various opinions, over which I exercised no influence, were given a free rein. It has been tried in Dornach, but from the beginning I regarded it as not being quite the correct way to go about things. Nevertheless, there is an obligation in this realm not to hinder whatever might want to break through into the light of day. But now that there has been a trial run, and people have realized that the goal cannot be reached along this route, there is no longer any need for our school in Dornach to give the impression that it wants to compete with what goes on at ordinary universities. Now our school can aim to give to humanity the very thing that ordinary education is unable to achieve; it can now become some¬thing for which human beings cannot help having the most profound longing. This is how the School of Spiritual Science in Dornach intends to be the real esoteric center for what ought to live in the anthroposophical movement. When I say that this school must be regarded with utmost seriousness, I immediately have to add that this very statement itself can never be taken seriously enough. So I want it to lead the way as we set out with our considerations. Those who regard the esoteric life flowing through this school merely as something that flows alongside their own life cannot be its members in the right and proper sense. Only those can be proper members of this school who are filled with truth in such a way that their life becomes intimately bound up with this spiritual life so that their whole life cannot but become intimately bound up with the esoteric teaching that flows to them from this school. My dear friends, your assessment of this school will not be correct if you regard it as a product of arbitrary human intention. This school has been instituted by the spiritual world. It came into being through listening to what the spiritual powers who guide the world consider to be the right thing for human beings in our time. So rather than regarding our school as a human institution, let us see in it an institution that has arisen totally out of the will of those spiritual beings who are close to the earth and who work for the welfare of mankind. If you accept it as the earthly image of a spiritual institution you will be looking at it in the right way. Your feeling for it will be right if you take every word that is spoken within this school as being spoken by someone who is responsible to none but the spiritual powers who guide the anthroposophical movement. This school is an understanding between those spiritual powers whose authority is appropriate for the phase of evolution mankind has reached today and those human beings who seek to become members of the school. It could be said, my dear friends, that you come face to face with the spiritual world when you become a member of this school. The more profoundly and intensely you grasp this, the more you will carry in you what the school must be, which is alone what gives it its true meaning. Those who know that the spirit itself speaks through this school will surely achieve the seriousness necessary for following with deep earnestness all that is carried on within the school. What today we can only do in Dornach within this school will gradually be sent by suitable means to all those who have become members of the school, but meanwhile, we cannot take the fifth step after the third, but only after the fourth. As time goes on, step-by-step, intimate contact will be established between all the members, wherever they may be, and what flows through the school in Dornach. As a beginning, my dear friends, let us turn to the very first thing that comes to meet someone who seriously sets out on the path to real inner awareness. Real inner awareness, my dear friends! We must be quite clear about the fact that the external world with which we are faced contains within it the task we have to fulfill during our physical life on earth between birth and death. We would be misunderstanding ourselves and also the gods entirely if we were to believe that we ought to bear contempt towards what comes to meet us as a task during our journey on earth between birth and death. Human beings must enter fully into the activity and work of the physical world. But what do they find there? They find beauty, magnitude, and majesty in all the wonderful formations of the mineral kingdom that also form the grounds we need in order to be capable of fulfilling our tasks on earth. They find majesty in the plant kingdom; they find what they need in the animal kingdom; and they find what is closest to them in the kingdom of physical human beings. They find all the things in the kingdoms of nature raised to a higher plane when they lift up their eyes to the clouds, to the blue sky or out to the stars, to the sun and the moon. Not to recognize beauty, magnitude, and majesty in all these things would cause human beings to stray from their true path in life. To enter into the esoteric does not mean a repudiation of the beauty, greatness, and majesty of all that presents itself to us in life. But however far we enter into the mineral kingdom with all its wonderfully formed crystal shapes, however far we enter into the plant kingdom with all its sparkling colors from which the sunlight shines towards us out of nature, however far we go in contemplating the enchantment conjured up out of the depths of nature in the lively kingdom of the animals, and however much we marvel at the way the secrets of the world all meet in the physical human shape and form, nevertheless, all that we experience in the depths of our inner being we do not find in these realms of form and color, nor do we find it in these kingdoms of the world in all their sparkling, bubbling life. In the end the human being stands in this world and says, “I sense the magnitude, the beauty, and the majesty of all the forms taking shape and the colors unfolding out there, but whatever it is that I myself am must have its origin in another world.” When the human being feels the beauty, magnitude, and majesty of the physical-sensory world and feels that he cannot find there the best of what he himself is, then he will be drawn more and more toward that place, where specifically all esoteric insight must come from. He will be drawn toward that abyss, only on the other side of which lies what a person can have of his ancient stand, his ancient source, his ancient wellspring.1 He will be drawn to that abyss, where he certainly must gaze on the boundary between the sensory world and the spiritual world; he will be drawn to that abyss, to what is meant for him as a bridge for crossing over into a wholly other world, to the exit point, to the threshold of inner awareness, and only to where the spiritual world lies. Moreover, specifically what I have to impart to you my dear friends, are the communications of the gestalt that in the esoteric has always been identified as the Guardian of the Threshold. There stands this exalted gestalt, a being, you will learn, from whom entry is obtained, a being that certainly is not less real than a physical person upon the earth, but who far surpasses the reality of the physical human being on earth. But whoever initially merely in grappling with and feeling into the esoteric, with human nature unencumbered by prejudice, allows the communications to come forth, such a person must then feel how this Guardian of the Threshold stands there, exhorting, admonishing concerning what the seeker after actual inner awareness should experience, when he really does step into the actuality of inner awareness. Why does the Guardian of the Threshold stand there? He stands there because true awareness can only be achieved when we approach rightfully and well-prepared, with a fully internalized open-minded demeanor and a true striving for the actuality of inner awareness. There is nothing theoretical about truly striving for actually awareness. A true striving for actually knowing is only achieved if the soul raises itself above everything offered by the sense-perceptible world. Those who approach this actuality of knowing too soon, unprepared and without the proper demeanor, will not achieve it in the right manner. They will harm both themselves and the world. A true striving for actual knowing is present to a high degree in those who seek a real path into the spiritual world, such as that which will gradually be opened up by the three classes of the School of Spiritual Science. This is also the case, though more on the level of the soul, for those who merely want to receive information about the spiritual world. There must be at least a glimmer of what the initiate experiences on meeting the Guardian of the Threshold. It is about this experience that we will now speak. Those who receive these impartations and allow them to work on their souls with fitting earnestness will find, by again and again going over and practicing what they hear, by inwardly experiencing what they hear, the path that in reality leads them across this threshold and into the spiritual world. So now, my dear friends, let us bring before our souls what it is that the voice of the earnest Guardian of the Threshold makes us aware of, if we would jump over from the semblance of knowledge on this side of the world to the true inner knowing on the other side. There he stands with his admonishing gaze. There he speaks about the world of the senses’ beauty and grandeur and sublimity. There he also speaks about the person not being able to find in this beautiful, this grand, this majestic world what he recognizes as his fullest worth, his unique individuality. There this Guardian of the Threshold draws our attention across over the abyss looming to the left and to the right of the Threshold, there he draws our attention across into another realm, into the realm of spirit. There however deepest darkness rules initially. The person must acquire the notion that what there bestirs itself in him only as deepest darkness through the impressions of the sensory world, that there lies the ancient wellspring, the ancient source, and the ancient stance of his own intrinsic essence. The Guardian of the Threshold says something like this, translated from the spirit language he speaks, when a person approaches his earnest countenance:
My dear friends, after the Guardian of the Threshold has drawn the seeker's attention to the tremendous contrast that exists between what our eyes can see in the realm of the senses before we encounter the Guardian, and what we can surmise from the dark recesses that lie on the other side of the threshold, in which the source and origin of our own being can be sought, he then allows the seeker to glimpse what awaits him when he makes himself capable of living within the light that must first brighten up and clarify itself out of the darknesses from that side of the abyss. Then a second word resounds from the Guardian of the Threshold, which I will write down and bring with me next time. This second word now indicates what the seeker must expect when he has crossed the threshold and formed within his own inner being, now lit up, an organ with which he can leave the darkness and approach what the Guardian of the Threshold says at this moment:
The Guardian draws attention to the wide expanse of existence-awareness where being is experienced in light, and to another expanse of existence-awareness, where in time's onward march, the powers of creation hold sway from epoch to epoch. Then attention is drawn to the depths of the intrinsically human heart-sensitivity, where the whole world is revealed as though in a mirror. By drawing attention to these three worlds, the world of space, the world of time, and the world of the heart's depths, there can resound from the world shaping powers the eternal admonishing word of existence-awareness, “O man, know yourself!”2 After this the person must be shown his inner nature. But the inner nature of a person is not only within the person’s inner nature; the human inner nature in all the world. What we carry in our inner nature directly comes forth and takes shape in the external world ether. Oh, the most secret thoughts, most secrete feelings and desires and stirrings of will, they come forth at the same time in the world ether and take on fully-formed shapes, so that in the external world we see in the shapes, in fully-formed creatures, just what we most certainly are. Also added to the observation of what we really are, there resounds then the voice of the Guardian of the Threshold, making clear to us in this manner who we are. Why is the abyss really there, this abyss that stretches between the sensory world and the spirit world? The abyss is there that out of it rise those forces of our inner nature that will not allow us to cross over the threshold. Such forces are there in our inner nature. They would stop us, hold us back, not allow us to come to true inner awareness across the Threshold. Such forces are there in our thinking; such forces are there in our feeling; such forces are there in our willing. When we merely have an inkling of them, they are formless.3 When we observe them, behold them, these hindering and hemming-in powers in our thinking, feeling, and willing that register themselves in the world-ether, then they appear as malformed animals. And certainly, nobody knows himself who cannot observe them in this significant form as malformed animals, which the person out of his own inner nature draws out and sees as hinderances, impediments for transitioning across the Threshold. The moment eventually must come in life, in which the person places before his eyes the images that live as hindering powers in his thinking, feeling, and willing. We must not allow ourselves to give in to any illusions about this. In ordinary consciousness one is not normally aware of what a person is, and one does not take seriously what a person is. In picture-form, in truthful-form the Guardian of the Threshold brings this to the person’s awareness. These are the words with which he clarifies how the forms are, how they come to be engraved in the etheric through the counter-striving forms in our willing, feeling, and thinking. A person must someday shudder before these forms that he inscribes in the world ether, and then he will begin to feel just what he has to overcome in order to penetrate to true inner awareness. The Guardian of the Threshold speaks, clarifying the nature of the beasts that rise up as forms in human thinking, feeling, and willing:
Only when a person in a shudder has beheld the images of the counter-striving powers in thinking, only then by beholding these negatives within, only then will a person acquire the strength to enter the true field of inner awareness. If a person does not have the will to observe in himself in the images of the three beasts, living there as the fear of knowing, as hatred of knowing, and as doubts about knowing, such a person will not come to inwardly knowing himself. He will not come to inwardly knowing the world, whoever hesitates there, shuddering in this manner to gaze upon himself. So come into being by impressing once again the threefold beasts placed before you, before your souls, my brothers and sisters, as the Guardian speaks in clarification:
How the person gets these wings, how the person finds the strength to subdue these three, will be the content of the next lesson, on Saturday at five o'clock. When these words in such a descriptive-solemn way have been presented to the person concerning his awareness of himself, when they have rung forth, then once again will attention be drawn, as in a perspective, to what stands there expectantly, in order to fulfill the word, “O Man, know yourself!” The first part, however, can only be completed by observing the beast’s three forms, which is the additional content of the next lesson. Then, once again, the Guardian of the Threshold calls out:
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| 270. Esoteric Instructions: Second Lesson in Prague
05 Apr 1924, Prague Translated by John Riedel |
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| If we would become at all familiar with the actuality of inner knowing, we must develop an intuitive understanding about the experience of being outside the physical world, outside an earthly body, our being split apart in regard to thinking, feeling, and willing. |
| Here [in the third stanza] we similarly now have “grasp”. [The words consider well and grasp were underlined.] Grasping, therefore already close to existence, within existence, appears here in the third stanza for willing. |
| [The words powers of life and world-maker-might were underlined.] But as I said fire in fire, reality that that is in all, in the reality of this all itself, that is what the Guardian of the Threshold informs us about. |
| 270. Esoteric Instructions: Second Lesson in Prague
05 Apr 1924, Prague Translated by John Riedel |
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My dear Friends! The day before yesterday we considered the first part of what we can call the encounter with the Guardian of the Threshold. I said that this encounter with the Guardian of the Threshold must be taken with much more than ordinary seriousness. One should be clear about this, for unless a person develops the feelings and empathic findings that accompany the impartations, then most certainly the person cannot achieve the reality of inner awareness. A certain sort of inner awareness certainly can also be held by a person without these unsettling experiences of personal self-knowledge which the passage into the spiritual world is able to give. That which is obtained without this inward unsettling experience, however, is not true inner knowing. Everything we can learn through our senses, and even what we can achieve with ordinary thinking, can at most yield knowledge of things that lie outside the human being; it yields nothing about the human being as such. This is because by his very nature the human being is supersensible. Whatever we can perceive of the human being with our senses, well, that is no more than his outer appearance. Whenever you encounter a human being, my dear friends, you should have the feeling that what you are seeing is no more than a picture of the true being of the person. In actual fact the true being of a person is something extraordinarily comprehensive, and we only gain an impression of what this true human being is once we try to reach some clarity about a number of things that appear simple. Consider only the fact, my dear brothers and sisters, that certain manifestations of illness in the human being have to be counteracted with what we call poison. This simple, ordinary fact is actually a tremendous puzzle. Why must poison be administered to human beings so that they can be cured of certain illnesses? What is poison? Ask the fascinating shiny black berry of the deadly nightshade, ask the belladonna, such a striking creature, what it actually is, my dear friends! Looking at the wide variety of many-colored plants that we can use as food without harm, we realize that they are the plants that thrive in ordinary sunlight, with the spirit that lives in sunlight. For just as we have a body that is spirit-infused, just so is all that is physical spirit-infused by sunlight. However, plants that do us no harm when we eat them absorb only the etheric forces. The moment a plant begins to absorb the astral forces that normally hover like a mist above the plants, it becomes poisonous. Belladonna sucks astral forces into its shiny black berries and is therefore poisonous. What does this mean? When we eat belladonna, we take in something that is astral. We bear within us astral nature anyway, since we possess an astral body, so we have within us something that constantly produces poison. And our ego produces even more poison than our astral body. We can now go on to say that our physical and our etheric body bear within them the processes of building-up. However, if these were the only forces active within us, we would remain permanently unconscious. If the budding, sprouting processes were to gain the upper hand, we would remain unconscious, for we owe our consciousness to the fact that our astral body and our ego-organization carry out breaking-down processes within us. A space for the spirit is created in us by the way the physical and etheric processes are broken down by our astral body and our ego. There would be no spirit in us if breaking-down forces were not constantly at work. When the astral body and the ego are too weak to do the breaking-down sufficiently strongly, excessive growth arises in the physical and etheric bodies. When the astral body and the ego are too weak, we sometimes have to support them by administering poisons from outside, poisons that can break down what the astral body and ego cannot. What does the physician do in certain cases? He says that in the sick person the spiritual element is too weak. The ego and the astral body are not carrying out the process of breaking-down sufficiently strongly. The physician asks for help from outside so that more breaking-down can take place. He seeks out plants that are more spiritual than others, for poisonous plants are toxic simply because they are more spiritual than others. This alone goes to show what great mysteries lie hidden in human existence and in the human being's relationship with the natural world. Only by approaching the spirit can we bring these mysteries to light. From what I have said so far you will sense that there is something almost uncanny about getting to know the true mysteries of the spirit, for we discover something that is creative in the spiritual world and yet destructive in the physical world. We cannot grasp the spirit in all its reality until we seek it where it expresses itself through breaking-down, through destruction in the physical world. The moment we approach the threshold to the spiritual world we find ourselves power¬fully confronted by the forces of destruction. Anyone who would prefer not to become familiar with the forces of breaking-down, the forces of destruction, cannot in reality enter the spiritual world. My dear brothers and sisters, when we look at the physical human being here on the earth, we find that the physical organism, quite by itself, forms a totality, and it is because of this that thinking, feeling, and willing also form a totality. You cannot think without there being a certain amount of willing present. Merely unfolding a thought involves some willing. You cannot will without also thinking. You cannot feel without some thinking. In ordinary consciousness thinking, feeling, and willing are intermingled. When we say we are thinking, it merely means that we are thinking most strongly, while our feeling remains more in the subconscious and our willing entirely so. When we say we are feeling, it means that we are feeling most strongly while thinking and willing are reduced. Every stirring of soul in the human being always involves thinking, feeling, and willing together. By being bound together like this, each of these three, thinking, feeling, and willing, is weaker than when standing alone. Our thinking is weakened rather than strengthened by willing. Our willing is weakened rather than strengthened by thinking. Our feeling is weakened rather than strengthened by thinking. Were we to think without any willing for the merest moment within our physical body, were the power of thinking, as it lives in the widths of the world, to fill us for the merest moment without being accompanied by the forces of feeling and willing, in this moment we as physical people would be totally paralyzed. Were we also just for a moment as physical people merely feeling, without it being accompanied by thinking and willing, because feeling is to some extent tremendously lively, we would be knotted up, we would have extreme bouts of cramping. Were we also just for a moment as physical people merely willing, without it being accompanied by thinking, we would be consumed by fiery fevers. Before we descended through birth, taking on physical-sensory existence in the womb, before that we as people were so constructed that thinking, feeling, and willing each stood separately, each by itself. There, however, our surrounding was the spiritual world. There we could endure this separation. If we would become at all familiar with the actuality of inner knowing, we must develop an intuitive understanding about the experience of being outside the physical world, outside an earthly body, our being split apart in regard to thinking, feeling, and willing. There is a great meaningful moment when someone steps across the threshold of the spiritual world and meets the souls of deceased people. In this moment, he must be sufficiently prepared, that coming forth from the very depths of his inner being in his heart he says the words, “These are the truly living!” A person says it when really stepping into the spiritual world, “These are the truly living!” For what lives in them above all else is their thinking. Yes, this thinking begins to live, when we step through the portal of death. Yes, this thinking also lived before we descended into earthly life. There thinking lived! And we behold thinking correctly in physical living on earth only when we say to ourselves, “I have taken clearly to mind, that before me is a corpse.” A corpse without soul, as such, cannot be. It can only be the remnant of a living person. A corpse cannot arise out of itself. In spite of being physically embodied, it does not have any natural physical possibility of intrinsic existence, but rather hearkens back to the living that preceded it. By unfolding my thinking in myself, I can think just how one thinks as an earthly person, namely as a sort of corpse. All earthly thinking is a corpse, a corpse of the thinking that was so very much alive before we descended into our earth-bound existence. Our physical body is the coffin into which our thinking was laid when we descended into the physical-sensory world. Without losing the ability for tucking1 into earthly life, without losing one’s connection to earthly life, to that end a person must be able to say honestly and sincerely, “As a physical, earthly human being you yourself are a coffin for your thinking, for when you descended from the supersensible world to the world of the senses, in this moment thinking died and is now the corpse of living thinking that dwelt in you before you descended to earth-existence.” Our will also does not live. It will only live when we have passed through the portal of death. Willing is a seed. Thinking is a corpse. Willing is an embryo of what rises up in us when we stride through the portal of death. What I have just said must be clear to one who delves in the esoteric. If it is, he will have an inkling of the way in which the whole of the person’s soul life will be transformed when he truly does enter into the world of actual inner knowing. He can only enter if he subdues the three beasts I spoke about last time, the beasts that are brought to light in the set of meditation-phrases I gave you. I will present these meditation-phrases to you at the end of the lesson, as I didn't write them on the blackboard last time, and you can all copy them. Just now, however, we will look back upon ourselves in how our willing, our feeling, and our thinking appear in picture-form in imagination, which allows these three beasts to appear when our inner life meets and manifests itself in the world outside, a world with which we are most certainly always inwardly conjoined. Therefore, any person who now steps forth along the esoteric path must become clear, that when he stands at the beginning, he must make at least a rudimentary attempt to separate thinking, feeling, and willing from one another. Otherwise, the person simply cannot come to the actuality of inner knowing. And the proper protection, which can come into being for a person in the danger of thinking, feeling, and willing disconnected from one another, that specific protection will be granted to a person when he takes up honorably what Anthroposophy has to offer. Anthroposophy forms thoughts so that the person can become strong for supersensible awareness. Also, just in coming upon supersensible-world communications, if a person even starts to consider them, the person must be strong. Thinking is strong just because we have to exert ourselves in thinking about understanding the supersensible world. What is the position of those who do not want to reach out to the supersensible world, of those who do not want to know anything about anthroposophical spiritual science? They are in the position of their brain being unable to keep up with their etheric body. The moment such people fill themselves with thoughts that have been presented in Anthroposophy, their etheric body runs out of the head, out of the brain. All that remains is only what the physical organism can think. From a higher point of view one can only pity those who cannot reach out to an anthroposophical understanding of the world. On the other hand, my dear brothers and sisters, it is certainly so, that however much thinking, feeling, and willing become independent in the currents of anthroposophical awareness, that this in turn also links a person properly with the forces of the world. Therefore, it naturally follows that the person so orients his soul forces, so that with his thinking, with his feeling, and with his willing he finds the way that must be walked, by means of which thinking, feeling, and willing can enter into the spiritual world in the right way. A further admonition, appended to those that were given in the last lesson, therefore a further admonition of the Guardian of the Threshold deals with how we should position thinking, feeling and willing, so that we can step into the spiritual world in the right way. We must ourselves be clear about the nature of thinking, feeling, and willing in order to understand what the Guardian of the Threshold is saying. The Guardian of the Threshold will first show how corpse-like our souls are, namely the shimmering-sheen, the semblance-image171 all thinking is that we develop in customary awareness in the physical body. A semblance of the world is this thinking, just as a corpse is the semblance of living, no longer living itself. Within this thinking that we have in customary life in the physical body, within this thinking is not our true self. It manifests itself there just as minimally as does the truly living manifest itself in a corpse. As soon as we have the courage, however, really to say to ourselves, “Yes, thinking that is developed from morning to evening in physical living, this thinking is mere semblance, I will become familiar with it as semblance, I will dive down beneath this appearance.” Then will we become ever clearer and clearer, that the physical body gives us a sort of thinking that is only dead semblance. The etheric body alone begins to give us the sort of thinking that goes out beyond appearance. Whoever correctly feels that earth-bound thinking is mere semblance, only the corpse of what before being earth-bound is spirited-soulfulness, that person feels himself, by and by, only as ether-being. Then bit by bit we become aware that in us is the spirit, the spirit that in ordinary awareness hides itself. We can, however, in no other way approach this spirit, unless in the same moment in which the appearance of thinking leaves us, in which the thinking so to say dies off in us, unless in this blink of an eye we begin to honor what now emerges in us as spirited ether-being, as ether-body. Yes, my dear brothers and sisters, when we look at the plants, the stones, the animals, or even the physical human being, none of this withdraws from us, even if we remain sober and dispassionate and are unable to admire2 nature properly. That ceases when a person crosses over into the spiritual world, for then the etheric immediately withdraws itself if a person is unable to admire it, to honor it. In the blink of an eye, when I can say to myself that thinking is mere appearance, when I have the will to dive down into this semblance, just then I must begin to admire, to really honor this ether-being. To this end the Guardian of the Threshold speaks the words for self-awareness: [The lines were written on the blackboard.]
This is the earnest admonition of the Guardian of the Threshold in regard to our attitude toward thinking. We must pause at the words honor and guiding beings [These two words were underlined.], as thinking, recognizing itself as mere appearance, must feel itself admiring, honoring. And the person feels, finds with empathy, what he then lives into, experiences as his ether-being, as something that leads outward from the earth into the reaches of the cosmos. Only then does a person know, as we depart from the physical, my dear friends, going over to the finer etheric, leaving the robust, forceful, solid physicality we are accustomed to, only then does a person know how to find the passageway to the finer, more intimate etheric. We must, if we would lead these thoughts over beyond their dead grave-like physical existence, over to where they are finer than in physical existence, over to where they themselves are alive, then we must choose a cadence for such a mantra, a cadence that is trochaic, that begins each line with emphasis, with accent. We must be clear about something, my dear friends, that what we embody in words the spirit merely descends into, rests, and reverberates initially at the Threshold. The word in our modern civilization has already become so physical, that it is like a corpse. Only when we feel the words embedded in rhythm, just as human being’s stuff of blood and air circulates in rhythm, then we begin to feel the word carrying us over into the spiritual world. Just as we literally feel blood circulating spirit in us, if we make such a strength-filled mantric maxim come alive in us, then we feel its rhythm, and feel carried by its rhythm into the spiritual world, just as we feel our life borne by, carried in the rhythm of our blood. The admonition about thinking which the Guardian of the Threshold speaks to human beings must be trochaic. [The word “trochaic” was written beside the first verse of the mantra; the trochaic rhythm was marked at the beginning of all seven lines with a macron and a breve and the verse was spoken with the corresponding emphasis.]
Felt this with empathy, again and again allowing the soul to be stirred into activity, forgetting all remnants of earthly life, living only in the words and rhythm, this carries ordinary human thinking up out of the physical world and into the etheric world. Used in addition to all the other meditations you have, my dear brothers and sisters, such a maxim, if you make use of it every now and then, as often as you would, is just what can carry you out of thinking into the spiritual world. Moving on from a person’s thinking to feeling, the matter is quite different. Thinking is pure semblance, a real corpse, dead. It did live before we descended into the physical world. With feeling it is somewhat different, for we regard feelings just as we regard dreaming, for feelings are no more intensive than dreams. The feeling person dreams, but in dreaming something of real existence certainly lives, there semblance and substance mingle, just as in our approach to feelings. But we also feel that we certainly do not want to plunge beneath this existence that begins in us with feeling. We like the appearance of thinking, which lives in the physical world, ever present. In this manner we never come to true existence, true reality. We must have the courage to dive down below what appears as existence. We must have the courage to place ourselves fully within feeling, into the inmost parts of our soul, and then, through the semblance in which we have become used to living in our thinking, through this semblance, something of reality will begin to emerge. Then we become aware of world forces surfacing in us that otherwise are around us in the world. At first, we are told to honor, when we want to ascend from the semblance of thinking to its true reality. Now we are to begin being sensitive in feeling, we are to begin directly being considerate in feeling, for in doing this we come upon the living powers of existence within ourselves. This is the second, which as an instruction for feeling the Guardian of the Threshold places before us:
This is the second admonition, the admonition concerning the guidance of feelings, the second coming from the earnest Guardian. [The second stanza was now written on the blackboard.]
And if we should go on finding through feeling the passageway out of semblance to substance, then we must go beyond the etheric into the astral. Then we must exert a steady force, as if climbing a mountain that becomes ever steeper. To do this we must point to the simple content of the words in which the progressive force of rhythm unfolds. It must be iambic, entrained in the warning words of the Guardian concerning the experience of feelings. And it is iambic. [Iambic was written beside the second stanza of the mantra and indicated at the beginning of all seven lines with breves and macrons, while the verse was spoken with corresponding emphasis.]
In this manner should we feel the rhythm, in this manner making the content of the words come alive within us, plunging properly down into feeling and striding properly along the pathway into the spiritual world. For the simple meaning of the words cannot yet do this by itself. We must bring our whole soul nature to a true perception, to a sensing, to a feeling of the rhythm in the mantric maxim.
Still deeper we plunge down out of the apparent sensory shine into real substance, into the world’s true reality, when we descend into willing. At this point, so that we can move along the right pathway, we must be able to hear the Guardian’s word that he speaks at the Threshold in admonition. The will is the strongest force in human soul life, even here on earth. But we cannot feel it because we only experience willing, so to speak, only as if sleeping. We are awake, really awake only in thinking. We are dreaming in feeling. We are sleeping in willing. We must ever and again think over, how first we fasten onto a decisi0n and then have it in thoughts, and then we see it again as a completed act. What lies in between, the crossing over in willing, is for customary awareness just as unknown to us as what we experience in spirit between falling asleep and awakening. Just as feeling is submerged in dreams, just so is willing submerged in sleep. But in this willing we put to sleep true existence, the genuine reality of existence. Just as we must increasingly learn to draw up from the depths of sleep whatever we experience there, so must we learn to draw up from the depths of the will what we experience in it. That is the third admonition of the Guardian of the Threshold, the admonition concerning the will, that we should find the right ways into the spiritual world. Then, when we can really heed this admonition, we become filled with what is spiritual existence in ourselves. Yes, my dear brothers and sisters, we experience that we have blood in us, that we have satisfaction through eating, that we have semblance of thoughts, that we have dream-like feelings. But in our ordinary awareness we do not experience how spirit streams through us, just as our blood does. When we heed what the Guardian speaks to us as the third admonition, then we can become aware in us of willing, then we can experience how the spirit in us rules. In lifting up a hand or an arm, I have willed. What has happened? Substance has been burned in me. A lively process of burning has drawn to a conclusion in the act of willing. This normally remains unknown. Each time, when through our own body a determination of willing is occurring, a lively process of burning is there. The chemist and physicist even say a burning process. But just as minimally as the human body is a mineral, but rather living and thoroughly beset by spirit, this is no ordinary fire in the human body, but rather living spirit-infused fire. This is no fire such as one sees in an ordinary candle; what is in the person is no combining of carbon with oxygen. Just as the person is ensouled, so are all the processes of nature in him ensouled. Whoever speaks of processes within a person from the standpoint of external processes of nature, such a one talks without knowing the truth of the matter, for no process of external nature settles down inside the person. Something quite else sets to work in the person. Within the skin of a person is no nature. Within the skin of a person is the metamorphosis of nature, the completed spiritualization of nature. Nothing remains in us as it is externally in nature. We could not live for the single blink of an eye if anything of the sort remained as it is externally in nature. In order to present willing to ourselves, we must grasp a picture. We must use a picture so that a lively imagination illustrating willing will come alive in us. Therefore, place walking in your mind’s eye. Walking is normally quite unremarkable in living. The greatest mysteries actually take place as a person is taking a single step. Now concentrate on this, as one walks, the arms are stirred into moving and fire sprays forth out of the person. A person will find, if focusing his attention in a lively way on how he flames, he will find the connection to what he as a willing being is in truth. He will become acquainted with himself, if he has the courage to focus in preparation on this imagination, with himself as a fiery flaming willing being. Then we will have grasped the creative might of the world, going beyond our individual existence within the skin, expanding ourselves to world-selves, which we as human beings are, and feeling ourselves in union with the whole world as willing-beings.3 But we have to learn to stay there, becoming willing’s flaming within the world’s fire, fire within fire. About this the Guardian of the Threshold speaks concerning our willing. And he speaks of the thrust of the will, as the will thrusts us into the full actual reality.
These are the words, inwardly and thoroughly felt, that will guide our willing properly in entering the spiritual world. [The third verse was now written on the blackboard.]
We have to develop honor in ascending from thinking to its reality. We have to develop soul consideration in ascending through to feeling from semblance to existence. Here [in the first stanza] in the next-to-last line there is “honor”. For feeling there is “consider well”. Here [in the third stanza] we similarly now have “grasp”. [The words consider well and grasp were underlined.] Grasping, therefore already close to existence, within existence, appears here in the third stanza for willing. There is a similar progression that we are made aware of: guiding beings for thinking, powers of life for feeling, world-maker-might for willing. That is the progression. [The words powers of life and world-maker-might were underlined.] But as I said fire in fire, reality that that is in all, in the reality of this all itself, that is what the Guardian of the Threshold informs us about. We must stand within this more firmly than we did when we descended in thinking from the rough robust semblance through to more intimate reality, where it was trochaic rhythm, macron then breve, stressed then unstressed. In feeling we have to ascend, as if climbing a hill, where it is iambic rhythm, breve then macron, unstressed then stressed. Here in willing we must stand within it differently. There it will be spondaic, macron then another macron, stressed and stressed. [The word spondaic was written beside the third verse of the mantra; the spondaic rhythm was marked at the beginning of all seven lines with two macrons, while the verse was spoken with the corresponding emphasis.]
The stark emphasis on the two first syllables in each line we should feel rhythmically. We should win steadfastness as the Guardian directs to us the third admonition. And so, my dear brothers and sisters, we should become aware how this word of the Guardian guides us specifically to actual inner knowing. While this Guardian-word has initially made us aware how we have thinking, feeling and willing in us in the images of the three beasts, the Guardian of the Threshold guides us further, about how we can strengthen this thinking, how we can strengthen this feeling, how we can strengthen this willing, so that they grow, rise, and cross over4 the animality, get beyond5 these three beasts, so that the soul grows wings, as depicted in the prior session’s mantra, in order to cross over into the spiritual world.
But the Guardian in due course gives us in the last mantra, which I then pass on,6 the instruction about what we should do to become stronger, so that we grow wings to awareness. Take it up, my dear brothers and sisters, take into your meditation what is given in these three mantras. This is what the classes should lead to, these classes that have been established since the Christmas Conference, that the esoteric might flow7 through the anthroposophical movement. Take up into your meditation these admonitions of the Guardian of the Threshold. It is not I who speak them; I speak them for the Guardian of the Threshold, who through these words will speak to all of you.8 For this school is an institution of spiritual life itself. Therefore, let us take up these words as those of the Guardian himself. Then they will be for us strengthening and invigorating words, coming to us after the harrowing effect of the last lesson, concerning which in looking ahead they step forth now in strengthening of the soul. A person must first be knocked down and away from what he grasps in the sensory world, in order to remain stout and strong in the spiritual world, in order to gain wings, to be carried across the abyss, which leads into the brilliance which streams out of the abyss, out of the darkness, out of which our humanity is born. To this end the Guardian speaks the words, in order to lift us up in turn out of this harrowing:
And as the Guardian spoke this word, he comes himself, infusing rhythm again and again on those words, to teach us in perspective about what we should attain, about what beckons us from the spiritual world across the Threshold.
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| 270. Esoteric Instructions: Seventh Lesson
11 Apr 1924, Dornach Translated by John Riedel |
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| [In the second stanza “feel” and "feeling" were underlined.] And the Guardian continues in the third section. [The third stanza was begun on the board.] |
| And thinking becomes for you Willing’s goal-directed human striving; And the will does this for thinking. ["Thinking" was underlined. The writing was continued and the word "virtue" was at the same time underlined.] You strive in virtue. |
| [At the same time the words on the board "head's", "heart's", and limb's" were underlined in white, and the words "spirit", "soul", and "strength" were underlined in red.] In this way the mantric verse is built. |
| 270. Esoteric Instructions: Seventh Lesson
11 Apr 1924, Dornach Translated by John Riedel |
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My dear friends! A whole group of new members of this school have arrived here today, and so I am obliged to say at least a few words once again to convey something of the principles of this school. The first thing to be said about this school is that it forms the esoteric aspect of the existing Anthroposophical Movement, which with the Christmas Conference here at the Goetheanum has been newly reestablished. Earlier there were a few esoteric circles at the Goetheanum. All these esoteric circles must by and by come into this school, for it certainly has occurred that with the Christmas Conference a new spirit has come into the Anthroposophical Movement, insofar as it streams through the Anthroposophical Society. I have also just spoken the words abroad, in recapitulation, which should point out the difference between the Anthroposophical Movement before Christmas, and what we now have since Christmas. Previously the Anthroposophical Society was a sort of administrative body for anthroposophical teachings, for the substance of Anthroposophy. Since Christmas it is different. Now it does more than merely foster Anthroposophy in the Anthroposophical Society. Now it is constituted so that Anthroposophy is actually done, which means that all things that flow through the Anthroposophical Society bearing on operations and ideas are constituted so as to be anthroposophical through and through. What has happened with this renewal, my dear friends, must be taken in with sufficient depth, and fundamentally must be taken in with deepest sincerity. The renewal will then allow a differentiation between the Anthroposophical Society in general, and this esoteric school within the Anthroposophical Society. In keeping with the principle of openness that was established at the Christmas Conference, the Anthroposophical Society will of course require no more of its members than that they stand honestly by whatever Anthroposophy is, that they are, we might say, listeners to Anthroposophy, and that they make of this Anthroposophy whatever they can with their hearts and souls. It is quite different within the school. Whoever enters this school, declares thereby that as a member he will be a true representative of the Anthroposophical Movement. And in this esoteric school, that eventually will be expanded into three classes, in this esoteric school the freedom implicit for every member of the anthroposophical community most certainly must be made to rule. Also, for the directorate, the Executive Council at the Goetheanum,1 whose members answer for the school, full freedom must rule. Being a true member of this school entails that in whatever matters a member is engaged with in daily life, that an anthroposophical approach is displayed to the world. And the Goetheanum Executive Council, as it appears to them, must be able to decide whether a member, not being able to be a representative of the Anthroposophical Movement, should therefore be stricken from the membership of the school. It must be a two-way relationship. In the future, in the holding and handling of this school, a certain spirit must be engaged, a spirit that is ever more and more serious and in a certain sense stronger. Otherwise, we just cannot progress further with the Anthroposophical Movement. We ourselves must really feel it within the school, especially if we have a chance to enhance and strengthen Anthroposophy. There will be hard times ahead for Anthroposophy, and so the members of the school must know the difficulties that they have taken upon themselves. They are not simply devoted to Anthroposophy, but are members of an esoteric school. And it must be seen as a commitment, a most inward commitment, that the operation of the Executive Council, as it is presently constituted, is seen in its esoteric substance. This must ever more and more come into the awareness of the members, which has not yet happened. It must happen. It must come to be generally known. And it says a lot, that at this time an Executive Council has come into being out of the esoteric. What is certainly being pointed out, is that all of those who rightfully regard themselves as members of the school, should see the school as having been founded not by men and women, but rather by the will of the present-day ruling spiritual powers of the world. The school should be seen as having been put in place by the spiritual world, and should be seen as the meaningful work of the spiritual world, the spiritual world that not only feels somewhat responsible for it, but the spiritual world that feels responsible for it in the strongest sense. Therefore, whoever does not take this School seriously, and does not carry it within when involved in daily activities, without fail, for such a member, who does not take the matter seriously, his membership must be stricken. Actually, lassitude to a very great degree has infiltrated the Anthroposophical Society in the last few years. To remove this forever is to be one of the many functions of this school. We should feel ourselves to be responsible for the words that we speak, we should before all things feel responsible for them, so that every word we speak, in the most serious sense, has been so fully verified by us, that we can represent it as truth. For untruthful statements, even when coming forth with good will, will work destructively within an occult movement. There must be no deceit about this, but rather the fullest clarity must reign. It comes down to this, the intention is not to allow it to wash lightly over a person, but the intention is to arrive at the absolute truth. And among the first responsibilities of a student of the esoteric, is that he not only feel a commitment to relate what he believes to be the truth, but that a commitment is felt to verify that the things that are said are actual objective truths. For only when (in the sense of objective truth) we have won godly spiritual might, the strength of which runs through this school, will we thereby be able to steer our way through all the difficulties that will beset Anthroposophy. One should also not fail to attend to what is happening in the external world. Now please, my friends, whatever is spoken in the environs of the school should remain within the environs of the school. Yet I tell you that even within the environs of the school, one may not forget the sorts of things that are being discussed by authoritative personalities, such as the following: “Those who represent the principles of the Roman Church will be doing their utmost in the near future to make the individual states of the former German Empire independent,” and I am merely reporting, “so that out of these independent states, with the exclusion of Prussia, the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation can once more be established, which in turn, having been established out of such a prominent quarter, will of course spread its influence over neighboring regions.” These persons say that they will have to do this in order to destroy, in root and branch, those movements that are most dangerous and frightful. They add that if they fail to reestablish the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, then they will find other means by which to destroy in root and branch those most contrary, those most dangerous movements. The movements they are referring to are the Anthroposophical Movement and the Movement for Religious Renewal. I am quoting them almost word for word. And you should see, from what I say time and again, that the difficulties will not become smaller, but rather every week greater, and that what I say is built through and through on a firm foundation. I would like you to take this to heart at once, by bringing an earnest heart-felt quality to what you become acquainted with as members of this school. Only when we are members of this school openly, fully, in earnest, and actively, will we be able to reach the bedrock that is absolutely necessary, if we are to make it through the difficulties of the future. You may conclude from this that opponents will take Anthroposophy, and its branch Religious Renewal, much more seriously than many already ensconced as members. For when one becomes aware of the intention of reconstituting the broken-up Holy Roman Empire of 1806, and the implication that it is in order to dispose of our Movement, then one must take the matter very seriously. In a movement grounded in the spirit, it really and truly does not matter, my dear friends, just how many members are in the movement. What does matter is the sort of strength living within, strength that has come out of the spiritual world. The opponents know that this sort of strong force dwells within our Movement, so don't enter into it lightly, but with sufficient strength and firmness. Now, my dear friends, the content of these class-lessons has essentially been drawn from those things which can be imparted about meeting with the Guardian of the Threshold, and what this meeting with the Guardian of the Threshold on first encounter, on first experience signifies for the attainment of truer, more genuine supersensible insight, of actually knowing. Today I would like to add a few remarks to what we have already been looking into. It is not easy to present to someone that the meeting with the Guardian of the Threshold can really happen, if the person has not had the experience of knowing what it means for their human nature to be in the "I am” and their astral body to be outside of the physical body. For if a person's essential being is closed up within the physical body, he can only take whatever is in his vicinity as the truth, when it has been verified through the apparatus of the physical body. And through the apparatus of the physical body, the sensory world can only come to be taken as a reflection of the spiritual world, which initially is not disclosed through the senses, but is merely reflected. Now in general, it is not so difficult to leave one’s body. It is done every time one goes to sleep. A person is then outside of his body. But when outside of his body in the state of sleep, then his awareness is also quenched to the point of unconsciousness. Only illusory dreams, or perhaps also dreams that are not illusory, surge up out of this loss of consciousness. It is part of the subject matter of the attainment of higher awareness, however, to leave the physical body with fully aware-self-possession, so that external to his physical body one may perceive around about himself, just as within his physical body with the help of the physical senses he perceives the physical world. And he partakes then, outside of his physical body, of the spiritual world in truth. Initially, however, a person just sleeps without awareness. Under ordinary conditions it is not given to us to know what could be seen when outside of one’s body. And this specifically is due to a person being protected from coming upon the spiritual world unprepared. If and when a person is sufficiently prepared, what happens with him then? Then, when the person steps up to the abyss between the sensory world and the spiritual world [It was marked in red.], when the person has been found to be prepared, as has been pointed out in the last lesson, then the Guardian of the Threshold takes the true individuality of the person out and beyond, allowing over-flight of the abyss [It was marked in yellow.], under the agency of what has been delineated in the foregoing mantric verses. And for the first time, from the other side of the Threshold, a person can then observe his own sensory being, his physical being. Such is the first grand impression of true experience, my dear friends, when the Guardian of the Threshold can say to a person, "Look over there, there you are, so you appear to the outside while within the physical world, but with me, you appear in your innermost being." And then resounding again and again from the Guardian of the Threshold is a significant word. For now, it resounds from the Guardian of the Threshold out over the abyss, this significant word, in calling out to the person, for him to retain his presence of mind when he looks upon himself quite differently from the other side of the abyss. And he does look upon himself quite differently. He beholds himself as threefold. [It was marked in green.]2 [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] He beholds himself in his threefold nature, expressed in soul in thinking, in feeling, and in willing. There are actually three people, the thinking person, the feeling person, and the willing person, all of which have been stuck into each person, and for the time being are really only drawn together in the physical world through the physical body. And all this, that the person looks upon, is intoned by the lips of the Guardian of the Threshold in the following manner.
Or it could be the human stamp, for one must of course translate the words from the occult speech.
[The mantra was now written on the board.]
The Guardian of the Threshold points out here how the three, which separate from one another as soon as the person leaves his physical body, how the three appear in relationship to this physical body. The gaze is directed out upon the physical body, upon the head, the heart, the various members of the body, and as said by the Guardian of the Threshold, "When you in actual truth behold the human head, this human head will be an image of the heavenly universe. You must gaze out upon the far-flung depths that seem to border on and to define the world, and realize it is not so, your physical one-sided envisioning of it, you must gaze out and on, and in your gazing out and on, you must remember that your head, in its roundness, is really a truthful image of the surrounding heavenly world.” And one may connect to this here and now by bringing into awareness the mantric verse.
One connects outwardly through the symbol of a triangle pointing up. [It was drawn before the line.] Through this symbol, as one pauses at this line of the mantric verse, you send your attention to the wide-open space above, and take note that everything around and about the earth is certainly part of this wide-open space above. You send your attention out and make it all an immediate presence.
Through this cosmic-heavenly presence flows the rhythm of the world, resounding as music of the world. When we feel the human heart beating, it seems as though this human heart is merely beating out upon all that passes before the human organism. In reality, what beats in the heart is a harmonious counterpoint to what has been circling as world-rhythm for not merely a thousand years, but a million years. Hence one again pauses, as the Guardian of the Threshold speaks accordingly the words "Feel the heart’s world-beat" and one senses, finds with empathy, feels what takes effect both in the heart and all around and overhead. [Now the symbol ⧖ of a down-pointing and an up-pointing triangle connected at the tips was drawn before the second line.] The triangles in this diagram join all that is below with all that is overhead.
This world-strength is the one in which gravity and the other earthly forces are concentrated and rise from beneath. In our thinking, that is, insofar as it is earth-thinking, adapted merely to grasping the earthly, we must gaze down and under, then we grasp the things that stream out of the earth working effectively in men and women. Again, one pauses by the "Think the limb’s world-strength” in a triangle facing downward. [▽ was drawn before the third line of the stanza.] [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] And one will feel the character of the word of the Guardian, how it should work today on the human heart, on the human soul, if one allows this mantric verse in commensurate manner to come alive within and to work effectively.
One says the following verse while rendering the up-pointing triangle symbol △ before the head: One says the next verse while rendering the connected up and down symbol ⧖ before the chest.
One says the last verse while rendering the down-pointed triangle symbol ▽.
And one tries, after having allowed this mantric verse to work on his soul, to blunt the senses, to close the eyes, to hear nothing with the ears, to perceive nothing, and to remain in the dark for a while, that one might live fully and completely in the atmosphere of what sounds through the words. And in this manner, a person will place himself in the sphere in which initiation into all reality can then be experienced. In undertaking this, a person may take the first step beyond the Threshold. But one must allow the profound word of the Guardian to work upon him fully and in earnest. This profound word of the Guardian speaks of everything, the moment we cross over the Threshold, of everything being different than it is in the sensory world. In the sensory world we think that thoughts, that ideas are predominant in people. This is the way it is in the sensory world. By itself this predominance of envisioning, of thinking, which is perceptible to customary awareness as well, is always intermixed with a bit of willing. Always in stepping from one thought to another, we must be using our will, as we do when we bring an arm into motion, or a leg into motion, or in doing just about anything we wish to do. But it is easy and refined, this willing that carries one thought on to the next. And so it is, when we are in the sensory world, the two are bound together, the predominance mostly of thinking with a little bit of willing, an easy willing. Yet as soon as a person comes across over the Threshold and comes before the Guardian, it will be quite the opposite, for there the bundled predominance is mostly of far-flung will and minimally of thinking. And in this willing that is otherwise sleeping in people, one catches in it a scent of the spirit, for the human head is constituted out of the cosmos, out of the heavenly world, a spherical copy in all particulars. Hence the Guardian of the Threshold, when we have crossed over to the other side of the Threshold, calls out the following words. [A new part of the mantra was written on the board forthwith.]
And now one sees that willing is something quite different than it was previously. Previously the senses facilitated sensory perceptions, mediated sensations, and one had no awareness of will coursing through the eyes, of will coursing through the ears, of will coursing through the sense of warmth, of will coursing through every sense. Now, one sees that of all that the eyes sense as manifold colors, that the ears hear as manifold tones, that a person discerns as warmth and cold, as the difference between coarse and smooth, as odors, tastes, et cetera, that all this, all in the spiritual world is a sort of willing. [The mantra was continued on the board.]
If a person has come to know this by looking back at his head from the other side of the Threshold as willing becomes predominant, [The verb "willing" in the second line of the mantra was underlined.] how the mind sets willing in place there, [The word "willing" in the third line of the mantra was underlined.] then he would furthermore know, how the heart harbors the soul, and how he can feel the soul in his heart, just as he can will the head's spirit correspondingly in the head. And then he knows for the first time, when he regards thinking not as a capacity of the brain, but rather as an capacity of the heart, of the soul of the heart, how thinking belongs not to an individual person, but rather to the world. Then he experiences world living, circling around as world music. [The second stanza was begun on the board.]
You live in glory, not in soulless semblance of glory, but rather in the glory of the glow of the being of the world. [The summary lines of the first and second stanzas were now written, as the first stanza was once again spoken.]
Summarized in the final line:
Summarized, bearing on the heart's soul, on feeling, in the sentence:
[The words "wisdom" and "glory" were underlined.] Just as a person gets to know the mind as a willing, so he gets to know feeling as a thinking in regard to personal presence and awareness in the world, if from the other side he observes the three, which only in the sensory world are one. [In the second stanza “feel” and "feeling" were underlined.] And the Guardian continues in the third section. [The third stanza was begun on the board.]
Now we have the full reversal. On the other side a person maintains a concentration in the head of something else than thinking, for willing is here [The first stanza was indicated.], as I have just explained, concentrated in the head. Feeling remains in the heart, where it is also felt in the sensory world, for the inner force of the heart continues on in the spiritual world,
["Think" was underlined.] On the other side, thinking is brought together directly with the limbs, which is quite the reverse in the sensory world. [The writing was continued.]
And the will does this for thinking. ["Thinking" was underlined. The writing was continued and the word "virtue" was at the same time underlined.]
And so, we have the full reversal in the spiritual world, by means of what the Guardian of the Threshold has said to us. While not being able to differentiate willing, feeling, and thinking while a person looks up from down under, it is differentiated as a trinity when the person looks on it from the other side, willing up at the head, feeling in the middle, and thinking down among the limbs. In this way one becomes aware that what is willed, concentrated in the head, is wisdom woven into the world, in which all the beings of the spirit stream forth, and that thinking, seen in the extremities, is human striving, that can live as human virtue. And the three appear before the spiritual gaze:
[At the same time the words on the board "head's", "heart's", and limb's" were underlined in white, and the words "spirit", "soul", and "strength" were underlined in red.] In this way the mantric verse is built. And a person must be aware of the inner congruence, more than aware, for as it floods into him, he must allow the mantric verse to work on him:
[Forthwith were these three word-groups underlined on the board in yellow.] These are the words of the Guardian of the Threshold, in which the three, emerging from the one as we cross over into the world on the other side of the Threshold, the three are guided into our mind's eye.
These are the impressions through which the soul must sift, if real insight, real inward knowing is to be attained, resounding in the admonitions of the Guardian of the Threshold, as he also says to us:
[It was written on the board.]
And these are the words, that for countless thousands of years, that yawn at all portals to the spiritual world, and at the same time, that resound spiritedly:
Imagine, my brothers and sisters,5 saying to yourselves at once, "I will take these words of the Guardian of the Threshold seriously; I will know that I was not yet human; I will know that I become so through insight into the spiritual world." Imagine, my brothers and sisters, saying to yourselves a second time, "Why, the first time I did not take these words seriously enough; I will tell myself that I need twice as many steps, from my present state of being, not being a true human being, in order to become a true human being." Imagine declaring to yourselves a third time, "I will know that I need three steps, from the spot on which I stand, not being a true human being, in order to become a true human being." Serious is the first admonition that you give to yourselves. More serious is the second admonition. But the stamp of highest seriousness must be borne by the third admonition. And when you know how to bring this trinity in three-fold seriousness into the depths of your souls, then you will have an inkling of what it means for a person, through insight, through actual inwardly knowing, to become a person. And then you will have come full circle, as we have in this class today, coming full circle to the first admonition, all of which should live in our souls as one self-transmuting verse.
Just so, my brothers and sisters, it has sounded just so in the heart, since there has been human existence on the earth, struggling for awareness. There has been a pause in this struggle since the emergence of the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch. This pause is at an end, by will of the heavenly, spiritual entities leading mankind. May it once again commence in a worthy manner. In your human hearts may it sound again. So the wise leaders of mankind, ever since there has been human existence upon the earth, have guided human hearts into glimpsing what works as spirit in the world, what works as spirit through the world in human beings, as the crown of the world. [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]
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| 270. Esoteric Instructions: The Lesson in Berne
17 Apr 1924, Bern Translated by John Riedel |
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| But truly there is no need to reach the teachings of the Third Degree of Initiation in order to understand this. Then comes a further degree in which the adept will be given the name Christ-Bearer. |
| Here feeling, touching, is an activity. [touch within was underlined.] In the third line touching has become a noun. [Touching's was underlined.] This repetition of that feeling, now metamorphosed, is what gives the mantra its mantric character. |
| O Man, feel inwardly in your living’s whole weave, Again, we have the experience as an activity [In the third line live was underlined.], and now life is a noun. [In the fifth line living’s was underlined.] We have ascended with constantly changing activity from the physical body, which is at work entirely in the earthly realm. |
| 270. Esoteric Instructions: The Lesson in Berne
17 Apr 1924, Bern Translated by John Riedel |
|---|
My dear Friends! Formerly there were a number of different esoteric circles in the Anthroposophical Society. Within those circles the material of the general lectures, drawn as it is from the spiritual life of the world, was brought to the members in a manner that enabled spiritual striving, esoteric life to arise in them. As indicated yesterday in the meeting for members, since the Christmas Conference a basic esoteric impulse will flow through the entire Anthroposophical Society in the future. And so, in essence the esoteric in a deeper form will be nurtured further. And as you will find published in the next Goetheanum members newsletter, in order that what is discussed more exoterically can be developed more esoterically, for this reason the School of Spiritual Science at the Goetheanum exists. The School of Spiritual Science at the Goetheanum therefore will be an esoteric school in the best sense of the word, so that in the organization of its classes, in the whole way it is structured, it will increasingly strive to become what a modern Mystery Center ought to be. Hopefully circumstances will make this possible very soon. The First Class, the only one established so far, is a beginning, which will develop as further classes are set up. Designating them classes was chosen for public use because people's state of soul is today no longer properly receptive to the kind of designation that used to be customary in earlier times. What matters, of course, is the content and not what it is called. That is why it is necessary for those who are accepted as members of the school to be properly aware of what it means to be a member. The School of Spiritual Science has been through a period of trial and error. Before I myself became the leader of the Anthroposophical Society there were various initiatives to create at the Goetheanum a kind of free university that would endeavor to emulate ordinary universities in certain ways. It has to be said now that these initiatives failed and that indeed they could not have succeeded, but it was necessary for the attempts to have been made. Enough is enough, however, and from now on there will be no more such endeavors. The real purpose of the Goetheanum is that every individual shall be able to find there whatever it is his own soul intensely seeks in its spiritual striving and cannot find elsewhere. Someone whose soul is striving in a general way and not in connection with any specific subject must … be able to find there an entirely satisfactory outcome for his endeavors. Those, equally, who are involved in a particular art or science must be able to find esoteric guidance in the various Sections so that they can deepen their spiritual insights. That is why a number of Sections have been established, some of which have already begun their activities. In Dornach especially a beginning has been made with the General Anthroposophical Section, the Section that is there for any individual who is seeking to deepen the life of his or her soul. It is important for our Anthroposophical Society to be able to encompass the larger circle of general membership. Anyone seeking Anthroposophy in any way must be able to become a member, especially now that we have recognized the Society to be an open and public one. No obligations are attached to becoming a member except those that arise as a matter of course out of Anthroposophy itself. For members of the school, however, because it must be an esoteric school in the real and true sense, certain obligations do arise. The esoteric undercurrent in the General Anthroposophical Society flows from the fact that the executive leadership1 is an esoteric institution, as I explained yesterday. As a result of this, everything that flows from the Executive Council will carry an esoteric undercurrent through the Society. But so far as the school is concerned, every member must be conscious of being a true representative of Anthroposophy before the world. It must be clear to every member of the school that he or she has to be a true representative of Anthroposophy before the world. This means more than is generally understood and must be taken fully and deeply seriously. For example, it is not right to say that the school deprives certain people of their freedom by not accepting them as members. The leadership of the school must be allowed to be as free as anyone else. It, too, must be granted freedom of action and thus be permitted to determine which individuals it can recognize as members. The freedom must be mutual. There is no point in making critical remarks about the curtailment of freedom if one has not been accepted as a member of the school. Furthermore, if a member of the school embarks on undertakings with which the leadership of the school cannot agree, so that it cannot regard that member as a true representative of the anthroposophical movement, it must be permissible for the leadership to cancel that person's membership. All this goes to show how very seriously membership of the school will have to be taken... These exoteric measures will give the school a character that will enable truly esoteric substance to flow through it. Those who become members of it will have to regard Anthroposophy itself as crucial to their lives in the strictest sense. Today we have gathered for a single Lesson of the First Class since it is assumed that those of you who are present will be able to make it possible to come at least occasionally to the Lessons that will take place regularly at the Goetheanum, where the content of the school is to be continuously elaborated. The aim increasingly will be to develop what has already started in the Medical Section, where Frau Dr. Wegman has begun to send out circular letters informing members who live too far away about what is flowing through the school. Today's Lesson will stand on its own, since I assume that most of you will be able to come to the Goetheanum, but I did want there to be something also for those who find it impossible to get to Dornach. My dear friends, my brothers and sisters, ever since esoteric striving became a part of human evolution there has existed within this esoteric striving a call, a challenge, a summons.2 This call, which became more exoteric during Grecian times, can be heard properly by a human being when he becomes still in his heart and soul, and then allows the influence of the stars above to work on him, the stars that resting there in the world-all, that take on forms there in their grouping-together, and through the peacefulness of their forms bring the words of heaven into a sort of script, that the person gradually will decipher. When he gives himself up in quietness of soul and in stillness of heart to the impressions of the fixed stars, when he similarly gives himself up to the movements of the Sun, the Moon, and the other not resting but wandering stars, when he so deepens himself in the movements of the circumference, where certainly what wields authority in the stars, which are only markers for spiritual authorities, for reigning powers of earth-existence, when he allows all this to work on his mind and heart, all that happens in the wandering movement of the planets, and when a person deepens himself in what lives around him entering his own organism as earth, water, air, and fire, when the person really deepens himself in the world-all and gazes upon the spirit in the world-all, and when he infuses himself with all that can whisper to him, the resting-star spirits, the wandering-star spirits, the elementary spirits, in this way he deepens himself in the call, the challenge, the summons which through eons has gone out to people striving esoterically. Let’s bring this to our souls today, as it resounds there from the heights, from the circling, from immediate surrounding area:
So it sounds forth from the threefold world-all. O Man, know yourself! Above all it sounds when the person comes to that situation in his conscious existence which is called the threshold to the spiritual world. At this threshold to the spiritual world a person notices how everything that surrounds him in the external, sense-perceptible world has greatness, beauty, and majesty, as well as much that is hideous, how he cannot live as an earthly person if he does not have a sense for all that color upon color lives in nature, for all that radiance on radiance unfurls in star-existence, for what arises and maintains itself living in all that surrounds him on earth. When he immerses himself in all this, and he ought to want to immerse himself in it, he begins to notice that however beautiful and great and majestic all this may be, the root, the source of his own existence is not in any of it. He must take note that he must look elsewhere for the connection with the source and root of his own existence. For this purpose, the threshold is there. On this side there is color upon color, effect on effect, force on force, life on life. this is the world merely of a person’s externality, not the world of his roots, the source of his existence. Over here initially is the light bright world, but over there, when a person looks across, there is darkness. But the person gets a feeling over there, where darkness still reigns, that actually there is true light there, there I must cross over into this true light. And this true light can only be attained when the person is prepared to attain it, when the person takes on the specific attitude and disposition in his soul, that thereby prepares himself to receive properly what as light streams out of the darkness and specifically what first gives him an image of himself. Then the person becomes aware that a spiritual being is standing at this threshold, a being known to a person as the Guardian of the Threshold, which he has to approach. One must feel and sense everything that the Guardian wants us to feel and sense, for without having come up to and passed by this Guardian, it is not possible to attain any genuine inner knowing. And all actual inner knowing that appears to have been attained without a sense of the Guardian of the Threshold is not genuine inner knowing. Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, take into your hearts something that can give you a preliminary sense of this earnest figure who stands there between not knowing and knowing:
More than anything else it is important to be able to say to oneself to the greatest extent, “I am not yet a human being. I must become a human being through what I shall develop and unfold within myself.” Clothed in pictures initially, is what in a person initially must remain hidden from himself. For as a person descends into the earthly world, he is tucked into all the forces of heredity. The forces of heredity hold what draws us downward. There is willing, taken over almost completely by the forces of heredity, enmeshed in the physical forces of heredity, when a person follows his trials and tribulations. There is feeling, that will drive a person into every misgiving and all kinds of indolence, into all sorts of doubts about the spiritual world. And there is thinking, that specifically is dead, is the corpse of real true thinking, that was our own before we descended from pre-earthly existence into earthly life. These three appear to a person in the form of three beasts that rise up out of the abyss, standing behind the Guardian of the Threshold in front of the light-bearing darkness. Three beasts rise up, making the person aware of what he certainly is, if he fails to activate the spiritual in himself. We see them there formed up. One as a bony shell, a bony ghost, is certainly an elementary embodiment, an incarnation of insubstantial, dead thinking, that lives however in the elemental realm. We learn to know that thinking is dead in us. Before birth it was alive, and it will be alive after death. The person’s physical body is a sort of grave, in which thinking is entombed as a mummy. The person takes this thinking, that for him as a physical person is his own, as a reality. It was indeed real before it became a corpse. … But there, the person was in pre-earthly existence. The more a person is aware that thinking in true reality is a bony ghost, the more he acquaints himself with the earthly human being. The more a person learns to know that feeling, that becomes milder and more harmonious through spirituality, in which the person carries it up, the more he becomes aware that feeling dependent on the forces of heredity is a hate-filled beast with split mouth, sarcastic appearance, the more a person learns to know that willing is like a terrible consuming beast, then the more he will be called inwardly to say, “I am not yet a human being; I must become one by attending to the spiritual powers. I must seek to bring my thinking to life, to internalize my feelings, to spiritualize my willing. At the same time, that truly gives great difficulties, for as we stand in physical life thinking, feeling, and willing weave themselves into the whole of our humanity. They flow into one another. In a diagram we could depict them like this: [left side of diagram] Thinking would be here [blue], not entirely separate but partly mingled with feeling [green], which in turn is partly mingled, not entirely separate from willing [red]. And thereby can a person maintain himself in physical life, by interweaving thinking, feeling, and willing with one another in his being. When the person comes over into the spiritual world, thinking, feeling, and willing split apart, and it is as though the person separates into three beings. And he pointedly has separated thinking, feeling, and willing from one another. [see right side of drawing] [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] The person becomes one with the world, overflowing into the world. While at one with his body, feeling unified in physical-earthly existence, because he is in a finite organic individual body, he gets the impression that he is a unity within his ego, his “I”. But through the earnest impulse that goes out from the Guardian of the Threshold, the person feels himself as a trinity. In going out into the world he feels himself in a certain manner divided up, divided up so that between thinking and feeling a space open up in between, not outwardly sensed but qualitatively there. A person observes, or rather feels, when he is at one with the world, that between the thinking-being and the feeling-being there is a sort of gap, a space. In a remarkable way we have thus come to realize that knowing, in the true sense of the word, is to live out into the world. Just as here on earth we are one with our heart or our stomach, just so are we one with sun and moon once we have stepped across the threshold. They are our organs. We become one with the sun and the moon, and the person as he is here on earth becomes the external world. What is now inside becomes foreign, as now stones, plants, and animals are foreign. Here on earth, you do not say, “I am a mountain, I am a river.” You say, “There is a mountain, there is a river.” And when you have crossed the threshold, you don't say, “I have a heart and lungs within me.” In the same way that you speak about mountains and rivers here you speak about heart and lungs once you have crossed the threshold. You point to them as they stand outside you, but you feel the sun and moon to be part of your inner being. You feel the sun to be part of your inner being between thinking and feeling, and you feel the moon to be part of your inner being between feeling and willing. [see right side of diagram] This is a fact of life, that in a certain manner a person can rise to, even if he is not yet clairvoyant, but rather inwardly deepens sound human understanding, and actualizes standing at the threshold alongside the earnest Guardian. It is a meditation, and is extraordinarily effective, this feeling that somehow can place the person outside himself into world existence-awareness, not in a generalized, blurred way but quite concretely, as if poured out into the cosmos, bearing the sun and moon within himself. But over the sun there is thinking, over the moon we have feeling, and under the moon we have willing. Another way of saying this is: Over beyond the sun thinking spreads out into the starry heavens, into the zodiac [drawing on the blackboard] of Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer and so on. Feeling overlies the circling orbits of the sun and the planets. Willing overlies the earth, for willing is totally bound to the earth, to the gravity of the earth, to the elements earth, water, air, and fire, over which we have the moon. This is how one can put oneself out into the world. A person’s way of comprehending the world today, when he speaks of many elements, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and so forth, would have been regarded by a person still under the influence of the Mysteries as the corpse of the world. Even a Greek in ancient times would have said to a modern person, “Not only do you pick the human organism to pieces by dissecting it in the clinical laboratory, you also dismember the world as a whole with your science because you conduct science only from the earthly point of view. Then see, my dear brothers and sisters, that still in the ancient Egyptian Mysteries it was still clearly known that one cannot learn anything of natural science by simply observing what is outside in nature. It was rather done only by one taking each thing, this was unequivocally made clear to each person in the First Degree of Initiation in the Mysteries, only by the person taking each thing inside himself, so to speak remembering each thing, just as it had appeared in pre-earthly existence-awareness. The science of nature is truly what simultaneously incorporates the earthly and the pre-earthly. And in the Second Degree one was told that in the earthly world one can of course learn geometry, the science of measuring, and arithmetic. For these human soul-activities are drawn from the physical. They present the super-sensible in the physical. This was not unveiled in the First Degree for it was considered dangerous. In the First Degree it was considered appropriate to describe the spiritual world to the pupil. Therefore, the science of nature was taught in the First degree, but in such a way that the pupil was reminded of the living thinking that existed within him before he came down into earthly life. In the Third Degree the person learned, solely by approaching the portal of death, that he may not thirst after blood, that he could find human existence outside physical existence, as in the physical body with blood. Naturally when you open modern books, you will find this interpreted that one may not thirst after killing or stabbing another person, not that a person may not thirst after blood. But truly there is no need to reach the teachings of the Third Degree of Initiation in order to understand this. Then comes a further degree in which the adept will be given the name Christ-Bearer.3 For the spirit of Christ was known by man in all the mysteries of the ages. There he was brought out first in what at that time was called chemistry. The spiritual nature of stuff is grasped when a person has gone through the portal of death. And chemistry instruction from the earthly point of view, before the pupil absorbed what he is outside his physical body, and also our present method of teaching chemistry, would have been regarded as the work of the devil in ancient Egypt. To the ancient Egyptian all chemists, all modern chemists, would have been sons of the devil, for it was known that things in nature were linked together with spirit. And it was well and completely known, even in those olden times, where instinctive clairvoyance pulsed through initiation science, that a person undoubtably is linked to the supersensible world. For those who belong to the School of Spiritual Science and the Anthroposophical Society, the way they learn ought to resemble the way people learned from an initiate in the ancient Mysteries. If initiated in this way, as well as for those who learn from an initiate, a gathering like the one we are now having is given its wholly spiritual, esoteric character. People must partake of this spiritual atmosphere with all their consciousness. To this end it is yet necessary that direct participation in the fullest sense of the word ever and again include bringing meditative content in various forms before the members of the school. One such set phrase should now be given to us, one of those formulas through which we can gradually prepare ourselves to press forward across the threshold, whether with our ordinary healthy common sense or with initiation awareness. What should be trotted forth to the person, what he himself should place inwardly with mantric rhythm before the soul, out of the speech of the spirit translated into speech that is useful on earth, can be given in the following words. [The first two lines were written on the blackboard.]
We feel an object with our fingers and call this touching. Imagine, my brothers and sisters, that you were to touch with your whole body instead of only with hand and arm. But you are not touching anything specific in your surroundings, you are touching with the whole of yourself, you are touching the earth with your whole body in such a way that the sole of your foot is the surface with which you touch and you are feeling-out and touching the way you are being supported by the forces of the earth by using the whole of yourself as the organ of touch. Unconsciously this is what we are doing all the time as we walk about or stand still, but we don't notice it. But when a person calls, summons these things in human life into consciousness, when you actually delve into your earthly experience, as it actually lets you experience it, when you touch and taste it somewhat, then you have the first feeling that must be meditated. [Writing continued.]
Now imagine, as you continue on in this mantric formulation, how what was at first an organ of touching and tasting is now something that is felt. This is a further step inwards. Previously you merely used your body as an organ of touching, now you experience it, live into it as an organ of touching. Just as when a person first touched and then felt, as a person forms a fist out of his hand he gets an inner feeling, touched and then felt, as you curl your hand into a fist, you have an inner feeling. Similarly, you feel and experience the touching and become aware, as you experience this touching, how something begins to move within you, something that the fluids and liquids within you constantly do as sculptors as they circulate. There the sculpting forces of a human being are inwardly experienced, the sculpting forces sent out by the etheric body. Such things are attained while the meditation is carried out in the corresponding manner. In the first line we have touch within. Here feeling, touching, is an activity. [touch within was underlined.] In the third line touching has become a noun. [Touching's was underlined.] This repetition of that feeling, now metamorphosed, is what gives the mantra its mantric character. Now a person steps up further, not merely to grasping the touching experience by living into it, but rather to inner grasping of life itself, to inner grasping in water of the etheric itself working. A person goes yet another degree inwardly and feels inwardly, as he touched inwardly earlier, he feels inwardly now life itself within him. A person envisions it, realizes it in this way. [Writing continued.] O Man, feel inwardly in your living’s whole weave, Again, we have the experience as an activity [In the third line live was underlined.], and now life is a noun. [In the fifth line living’s was underlined.] We have ascended with constantly changing activity from the physical body, which is at work entirely in the earthly realm. Here [in the first line] the objective is touching. In the next line [the third] it is experiencing activity, and here it is inwardly feeling the activity. [The word feel in the fifth line was underlined] It is placed in the fullness of life like a noun.
—in breathing—
We have ascended as far as the air and shall now rise even further to where we enter into our fire nature, our warmth nature. [Writing continued.]
Again, we have the verb feeling becoming a noun. [In the seventh line feeling's was underlined.]
All of this can now be summarized in the single sentence we come to next.
The elements are earth, water, air, and fire. Let us now ascend further from all that surrounds us in the elemental world and proceed to the powerful activity that comes towards us from the circling round about, from the sun, the moon and the circling planets. In later Lessons we shall look in more detail at the way we participate in the movements of the circling planets and the connection this has with the being of man. Today the mantric formulation is more general. We are to ascend in meditation from an experience of the elemental world to an experience of the circling with these words: [writing continues]
And this is summarized in the words:
Bring yourself into being means to fashion yourself, to make yourself into a being. Then we ascend to what we can feel especially in the existence of our head when we turn our attention to the fixed stars, those stars that depict the shapes, for example, of the zodiac and that regulate the existence of the world. Here we feel how all that quietly lives and weaves in our head is an after-effect of what we see up there among the fixed stars heralding heaven. We can ascend to this if we continue our mantra as follows: [writing continued]
In summary:
Fashion yourself through heaven's guardians, through those beings you discern through the words and the script of the fixed stars to be the ones who heed, herd, and help guard the world. My dear brothers and sisters, such things are there in order that they may work on in the soul, work on in such a way that the inner structure of such mantras comes to be felt as inner harmony, and that such mantras, as they are repeated over and over again in the soul, so that the soul in this finally strives and weaves and continues and thereby finds the way across to the serious Guardian in the proper manner. Finding him improperly and being swept back into the physical world, a person can easily be disconcerted in the physical world, by confusing what applies to the spiritual world with what applies to the physical world. [At this point the shorthand report has a long sentence which cannot be deciphered.] We will let work on our souls that which makes us appreciate how true, genuine, honest awareness is gained at the threshold to the spiritual world where we, as we approach this threshold, become aware of such earnestness. We will let work on us what has already been spoken here today.
Then, however, comes the inner courage that arises and persists in the words:
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| 270. Esoteric Instructions: Eighth Lesson
18 Apr 1924, Dornach Translated by John Riedel |
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| And so the Executive Council in Dornach, as underscored since the Christmas Conference, is an initiative executive council. Understandably, governance must take place. |
| This is essential in this day and age. Under any other conditions, the leadership of the School of Spiritual Science cannot readily commit itself to working together with someone as a member. |
| And he begins to understand true magic, a magic that at first appears as thoughts, that lives through arms and hands, through legs and toes. |
| 270. Esoteric Instructions: Eighth Lesson
18 Apr 1924, Dornach Translated by John Riedel |
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My dear friends! Today an even greater number of friends of Anthroposophy have made their appearance here, who have never before attended, and so I am obliged, with a few introductory words, to speak about the principles of the school. It certainly must be considered with utter gravity, that with the Christmas Conference here at the Goetheanum a breath of fresh air has come into the Anthroposophical Movement. And the entrance of this fresh air must penetrate thoroughly into awareness, especially so for the members of our School of Spiritual Science. Yes, I have pointed it out time and again, but I know that there are many friends of Anthroposophy here today, who have not yet been informed of the matter, and so I must lay it out once again. It is certainly so, and it has had to be declared again and again since the Christmas Conference, that the Anthroposophical Movement must be strictly distinguished from the Anthroposophical Society. The Anthroposophical Movement represents the infusion into human civilization of spiritual intervention and spiritual life-impulses, that can and should come into being in our time directly out of the spiritual world. The Anthroposophical Movement is there, not because human beings desire that it be there, but rather because it appears appropriate to the spiritual powers controlling and guiding the world, working to ensure the proper course of human history, it appears appropriate to these spiritual powers, to allow spiritual light, light that can come appropriately through Anthroposophy, to flow today into human civilization. To that end the Anthroposophical Society was established as a governing body, to govern anthroposophical wisdom and institutions. And it had to be emphasized, time and again, that Anthroposophy is something above and beyond the Society, and that the Anthroposophical Society is merely the exoteric governance. This has changed since the Christmas Conference here at the Goetheanum. Since the Christmas Conference it is quite the opposite. And only because the case is quite different, am I ready to clarify, with the Executive Council1 established at the Christmas Conference, am I able to carry out the work that is appropriate, the work moreover that needs to be taken up, and only so am I able to clarify, together with the Executive Council, the assumed functions of leadership of what was established at Christmas as the Anthroposophical Society. What has happened through all this, I can address in just one sentence. This sentence is, that since Anthroposophy will now govern throughout in the Anthroposophical Society, all that occurs now within the Anthroposophical Society must be Anthroposophy itself. Since Christmas, Anthroposophy must be what is done in the Anthroposophical Society. Every individual deed must henceforth have the immediacy of an esoteric character. The appointment of the Dornach Executive Council on Christmas Day was an actual esoteric implementation, an implementation that must be considered as having come directly out of the spiritual world. Only when this is kept in mind by our anthroposophical friends can the Anthroposophical Society, which was actually founded in this manner, only then can the Anthroposophical Society flourish. And so the Executive Council in Dornach, as underscored since the Christmas Conference, is an initiative executive council. Understandably, governance must take place. But governance is not the first matter of business to be attended to, but rather the business of allowing, of doing everything to allow Anthroposophy to flow through the Anthroposophical Society. To accomplish this is the aim. The installation of the Dornach Executive Council took place in just such a way within the Anthroposophical Society. And it must be quite clear that from now on relationships within the Anthroposophical Society cannot be built on just any sort of bureaucratization, but rather must be built throughout on humanization. The statutes containing various paragraphs were produced in this way at the Christmas Conference. One must be aware, when one is a member, and must give affirmation to this, or else as described in detail in the statutes, the Executive Council at the Goetheanum must do what it has to do. And the Anthroposophical Society is constituted this way today. It is grounded on human relationships. It is a small matter, but I must again and again emphasize it, that a membership card has been handed out to each member, signed by myself, so that at least, since at first it is a somewhat abstract matter, it is nevertheless handled with some personal rapport. It would have been quite possible to have had a stamp used with my signature on it. I don't do this, even though it does not lead to equanimity, by and by appending my signature to twelve thousand member-cards, I don't do it, because in reality the most abstract personal relationships would be established, in not having paused for just once, for just a moment, for each individual member, to focus on the name borne on the member's card. And self-understandably, by doing this, all future relationships will be somewhat more humanistic, and will put a mark on the commencement of concrete effective work within our society. In this regard it must also become clear, I must emphasize this also, it must lie within the awareness of the membership, I emphasize this as otherwise many transgressions will occur, it must lie within the awareness of the membership that when the name General Anthroposophical Society is used, that the affirmation of the Executive Council at the Goetheanum has been obtained first. Even so, if something or other of an esoteric nature is distributed from the Goetheanum in Dornach and broadcast, this should only happen on the basis of an agreement with the Executive Council at the Goetheanum. Therefore, so that nothing will be claimed as going out in the name of the General Anthroposophical Society, that for those of us here, nothing given here as formulation and instructions will be claimed as having been authorized by the Goetheanum, that is, unless an agreement with the Executive Council at the Goetheanum is in place. No abstract relationships will be possible in the future, only concrete relationships. Whatever goes out from the Goetheanum, must have the stamp of approval of the Goetheanum, made in concrete. This is why we need the title "General Anthroposophical Society", for someone may put out something about lectures that may have been held, or about formulations of various sorts given here, someone, as an active member of the Anthroposophical Society, might share a document prepared with the letterhead of the General Anthroposophical Society at the Goetheanum, or from Frau Wegman, and this must give the impression that the Executive Council at the Goetheanum is in agreement. It is really important for the Executive Council at the Goetheanum to be regarded as being at the center of the Anthroposophical Movement in the future. Now and always, the relationship of this School to the Anthroposophical Society must be held in the consciousness of the membership. Someone may be a member of the Anthroposophical Society, if he has the inner heartfelt drive to get to know, to learn to live with, what goes through the world as anthroposophical ideas of wisdom and impulses of life. One undertakes no other commitment as such, other than taking up with heart and mind what has been bestowed by Anthroposophy itself. Out of this general membership, one can, when the time is right, for now a minimum of two years has been stipulated, one can after a time of having lived within the flow of the membership of the General Anthroposophical Society, one can then seek membership in the School of Spiritual Science. In coming into this School of Spiritual Science, a person undertakes a really serious commitment to the Society, to anthroposophical endeavors, specifically, in becoming a member, he commits to being in truth a representative of anthroposophical endeavors before the world. This is essential in this day and age. Under any other conditions, the leadership of the School of Spiritual Science cannot readily commit itself to working together with someone as a member. Do not think that this constitutes a limitation on your freedom, my dear friends. Freedom itself requires that all who here concern themselves with this remain free. And as members of the school can and should be free in this endeavor, so also must the leadership of the school be free, that is, in being able to establish with whom they can and will work, and with whom not. Therefore, when the leadership of the school, for one reason or another, is led to conclude that a member cannot be a true representative of anthroposophical matters before the world, then it must be possible, for instance, if admission is sought, to disapprove the admission, or if admission has already occurred, the person under discussion having already become a member, to say that the membership must be forfeited. This must be adhered to in the future unconditionally in the strictest sense, for through this in actual fact a free working relationship of the leadership of the school with the membership will be ushered in. As has already been stated in the Members’ Supplement to the Goetheanum News, we are endeavoring step by step to make it possible for those unable to participate at the Goetheanum to take part in some way in the continuing work of the school. In great measure all that was possible would have already been presented, but there has been much to do here since the Christmas Conference, and we can only take the fifth step after the fourth, and not the seventh step after the first. We may look through various newsletters, and in what is released to peripheral members partake of what goes on here in the school. We have already started, and those in the school involved in medical affairs may participate by partaking of the newsletter Frau Dr. Wegman is sending out concerning the work of the school. Gradually other possibilities will emerge and I beg you to be patient in this respect. The most comprehensive thing yet to be mentioned would be this, that the school in particular must not become attached to a mode of operation stemming from human impulses, but rather to a mode of operation from the side of the spiritual world. A resolution of the spiritual world is to be taken up with whatever means are possible. This School ought to be an institution of the spiritual world for the present day, as has been the case at all times in the mysteries. It must be pronounced today that this school itself must develop, so as to become what it actually can be in our time, a real mystery school. Thereby you will come to be the soul of the Anthroposophical Movement. Along with this, moreover, it has already been pointed out in what manner the membership of the school is to be attached in earnest to the school. It is self-evident that whatever esoteric work has been going on will be taken into the work of the school. For this School is the fundamental esoteric bedrock and wellspring of all esoteric work within the Anthroposophical Movement. And to this end, various personalities of whatever background, in founding something esoteric in the world, must have the agreement of the Executive Council at the Goetheanum. These personalities must either come into full agreement with the Executive Council at the Goetheanum, or else they cannot in the least allow what emerges from the Goetheanum to flow into their impulses or into their teachings. Whoever seeks to strive esoterically under conditions other than these just mentioned, simply cannot be a member of this School. In this case such a person must be outside of the school, striving esoterically but by this School unrecognized, and he must himself be clear, that such undertakings can incorporate nothing of what wells up within and emanates from this school. Association with the school must be as thoroughly and concretely joined as possible. In this way each member of the School of Spiritual Science at the Goetheanum in Dornach, each and every member, must make clear to himself, that the school must be able to be regarded in such a manner, that a member is actually a true representative of anthroposophical matters before the world, that every single member's exoteric involvement with Anthroposophy is just so, that it is dealt with as a member of the school. The attempt has certainly been made at the Goetheanum, in the event of my no longer being in a leadership position, no longer being the President of the Anthroposophical Society, for the school to develop in a fashion similar to other schools. Solely by means of interpersonal relationships that will not be possible. Here one finds real esoteric substance, which just cannot be found in any other school. And of course, no attempt will be made to rush into some sort of concordance with schools of the world, but rather what should begin at once, is to bring up questions, whenever an honorably searching person of today, from some area of life or another, comes upon this substance, questions that just cannot be answered outside of the esoteric. It must be so in the future, especially for members. It is simply the way it is, for with the Christmas Conference something actually occurred, and this occurrence must be taken seriously. It has occurred, and in the future, because initiatives ought to be disseminated from this site, from the Goetheanum, in fulfilling its mission, it must be taken most seriously, it must be maintained unconditionally as a standard in fulfilling its mission, it must be crystal clear, and in the future in all the falderal attended to by members of the School it must be hearkened to, and again and again attention must be drawn back to it, in order to have a firm yet free acquaintanceship with it, which is by name, that I am present as a representative of Anthroposophy that flows forth from the Goetheanum. Whoever does not do this with a will, whoever cannot take this up again and again in an unconstrained free and easy manner, mulling over Anthroposophy quietly until after quite some time being prepared, striving in some manner or another along the lines of this policy, whoever believes that he will progress by first disavowing us in order then to be led back to us, usually does not really return to us, and should rather just give up his school membership at once. Membership in the School in the future, I can assure you, will be taken most seriously. I believe that for the various members of the school who henceforth really take up Anthroposophy with a will, taking it up not just for any reason, but taking Anthroposophy up in their work, taking up Anthroposophy in their work in the manner of holding it dear in their hearts, that it will lead again and again to the following phrase coming to mind, that one should approach people with Anthroposophy not just as immediately present and obvious. It must be communicated, by mouth or in some other fashion, in such a way that people can choose merely to remain within their own point of view outside of the school. All this is what I must once more set out before you. And it had to be mentioned here today, because there are many, many friends of Anthroposophy who until now have not taken part in the work of this School. And specifically, because so many friends are here today who are new to the Class, we have had to wait awhile to start the lesson, we also, before the lesson has even begun, have had to attend to this preamble, which is, in a certain sense, an introduction to today's lesson. I will be holding a second lesson, the date of which is still to be determined, but no other friends will be able to attend this second lesson, other than those who are here today. Also, I will ask any others, who may be coming later, to be patient. Essentially, we cannot accomplish anything, when each time, whenever a lesson is held here, if ever and again new members arrive. With today's lesson we must be considered ourselves fulfilled with those actually in possession of memberships at this time. Certainly, one can become a member, although at the next lesson only those can take part, who are also already in such a position today. Yes, only those will be in this day's continuation. Well, I would like here and now to begin the declamation, but at first please take note of this, that initially you are merely witnessing the mantric formulation as a reference to what initially emerged throughout time in the mysteries, and then by way of the outgoing mysteries from there hence unto the stars, as the imprinted script unto the entire cosmos, and into human souls, resounding in human hearts, resounding as the great clarion call to human beings, to strive after a real insight, a real knowing of one's self. The clarion call is this, "O Man, know yourself!" It resounds out of the entire cosmos. As we gaze out to the resting stars, to those stars that in especially significant script stand in the zodiac, to those resting stars which through their gathering together in certain forms bring to expression the great cosmic script, then for one who understands this writing, there will initially be inscribed the contents of the Word of Worlds "O Man, know yourself!" As one gazes out upon those, that as wandering stars journey along their ways, initially the sun and the moon, although also the other wandering stars, among which are the sun and the moon, then may be revealed, wrapped into the journeying paths of these wandering stars, as also in the forms of the resting stars, the content of the world-strengthening, soul-daunting Word of Worlds, and just so in the movement of the heart’s-, the heart’s world-content, the contents of one’s innermost nature. And we take part through what we experience in the elements around about us out in the circumference of the earth, as well as experiencing them through our skin, through our senses, through having them nearby us, moving in us, and acting in our own bodies as Earth, Water, Fire, Air, through all that will the impulse of willing be embossed in the following words. In this way we may allow the Word of Worlds to be intoned to human beings, to work on our souls by means of these mantric words:
My dear friends, my dear brothers and sisters, nothing is known but what flows forth from the spiritual world. Whatever passes as knowing by mankind, but is neither fathomed from what emerges from the spiritual world, nor is shared by those who are able to quest within the spiritual world, is not real knowing. The human being must be clear about this, when he gazes around about the world, gazing in the realms of nature at the things that present themselves in color upon color, at the things that are revealed radiant and resplendent, at the things living overhead in the beaming stars, at the things presenting themselves in the warmth of the sun, and at the things that sprout forth out of the earth. In all of these things there is sublimity, grandeur, beauty, and the fullness of wisdom. And a person would be greatly in error, if he were to blithely pass by this beauty, sublimity, enormity, and fullness of wisdom. The person must, when an esoteric wishes to press on with him into real knowing, he must also have a sense of whatever is around about himself in the world, an open, free sense. For during the time between birth and death, during his earthly existence, he is obliged to draw his forces out of the forces of the earth, to carry out his work within the forces of the earth. But so true it is, that the person certainly must take part in all that is around him in color after color, tone after tone, warmth after warmth, star after star, cloud after cloud, creature after creature in the external realm, so true it is, that the person looks there around about at all of the abundance, grandeur, sublimity, fullness of wisdom, and beauty imparted to him through the senses, and can nowhere find anything, of what he himself is. Directly then, as he has a real sense of the sublimity, beauty, and grandeur in his surroundings in life on earth, then he will immediately take notice, that nowhere to be found in this light, bright realm of earth is the innermost source of his own existence. It is elsewhere. And having a full, inward appreciation of this, this brings the person to the point of seeking an opening into the state of awareness in which he can grapple with what we call the threshold to the spiritual world. This threshold, that lies immediately before an abyss, this must be approached, and when there it must be remembered, that in all that surrounds a person on the earth in earthly existence between birth and death, the fountainhead of what it is to be a human being is not to be found. Then one must know that on this threshold stands a spirit-form that is called the Guardian of the Threshold. This Guardian of the Threshold is concerned in a way for the welfare of the person, that the person does not come unprepared, without having thoroughly lived with and taken deep into his soul the things that I have already spoken about, that the man does not approach this threshold unprepared. However then, when the person in all seriousness is really prepared for spiritual knowing, and it may be that he acquires it in clairvoyant consciousness, or it may be that he acquires it through healthy common sense, for in keeping informed both are possible. Whichever is the case, whether knowing about or seeing the Guardian of the Threshold, just then is it possible, that the Guardian of the Threshold may really reach out with a guiding hand and allow the person to look out over the abyss. There, where the person seeks his inner being’s true condition, his actual origin, lying there initially, however, on that side of the threshold, is uttermost darkness. My dear friends, my dear brothers and sisters, we seek light, in order to see the origins of our own human essence in the light. Darkness however spreads out at first. The light that we seek must stream out of the darkness. And it streams out of the darkness only when we become aware of how the three fundamental impulses of our individual soul-life, namely thinking, feeling, and willing, are held together here in life on earth through our physical body. In physical earth existence thinking, feeling, and willing are bound together. If I were to draw it bundled together schematically, I would draw it first with thinking [yellow], then with feeling [green] extending over into thinking, and then with willing [red] extending over into feeling. In this way the three are bound together in earthly existence. [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] The person must learn at heart that the three may separate from one another. And he will learn this when he steadfastly, more and more, takes the meditations recommended by this School as the forceful content of his life of soul. He will notice that it starts to happen. [It was once again drawn on the board.] Thinking [yellow] will become free, cast loose from its union with feeling, as will his feeling [green], as will his willing [red]. For the person learns to perceive without his physical body. [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] The physical body had been holding thinking, feeling, and willing together, drawn together into one another. [Around the first drawing an oval was drawn.] Here [by the second drawing of thinking, feeling, and willing] the physical body is not at hand. Gradually, through the meditations that he receives here from the school, the person begins to feel himself outside of his body, and he comes into that state of being in which whatever the world is, for him will be the self, and whatever self was, for him will be the world. As we stand here on the earth in our earthly existence, we feel ourselves as human beings, we say, in that we become inwardly aware, that this is my heart, these are my lungs, this is my liver, this is my mouth. The various things that we call our organs, called by us our human organization, we label as our own. And we identify around about, there is the sun, there is the moon, there are the stars, the clouds, a tree, a stream. We denote these various things as being external to us, as we are bound up in our organs. We are quite distinct from those things that we identify externally as the sun, the moon, the stars, and so forth. When we have prepared our soul sufficiently, so that we are able to perceive without the body, that is, distinct from the body, in the spirit-all, then a directly opposite awareness commences. We speak then of the sun as we speak here in earth existence of our heart, namely, that is my heart. We speak of the moon as that which forms my character. We speak of the clouds in a manner similar to speaking of our hair on earth. We call our organism all of what was a part of the whole surrounding world for the earthly man. And we identify outwardly, look there, a human heart, a human lung, a human liver, they are objective, they are the world. And as we here as men and women look out toward the sun and moon, as we gaze about in a physical body, so do we gaze about from the perspective of the world-all, in which the sun and moon and stars and clouds and streams and mountains are in us, and we look out at the person, who is our external world. The difficulty is only in the relationship of space. And this difficulty will be overcome. And we may be sure, that as soon as we step out with our thinking out of our physical body, this thinking is at one with all that reveals itself in the resting stars. As we call our brain here, that it serves as the workhorse of our thinking, so do we begin to appreciate the resting stars, namely the resting stars of the zodiac, as our brain, when we are out there in the world and then gaze down upon the man external to us. And those things that revolve as wandering stars, we perceive as just what our force of feeling is. Our power of feeling moves then in the coursing of the sun, the moon, in the coursing of the other wandering stars. Yes, between what we experience as thinking in the resting stars, and feeling, is the sun within ourselves [Between yellow and green on the second drawing, the sign of the sun was placed.] And between feeling and willing lies the moon, which we feel as being within ourselves. [Between green and red the sign of the moon was placed.] And quite simply, in meditating on these figures, lying within these figures is the force, ever more and more, for us to approach a spiritual perspective. One may come to this only when the substance of what I speak, of what I articulate here with these words, can actually be inwardly experienced, namely going out and beyond the physical body, extending oneself out over the cosmos, feeling the members of the cosmos, sun and moon, stars, and so forth, as one's own organs, and looking back at the person as being in the external world. Dear friends, dear brothers and sisters, the thinking that people practice here on the earth between birth and death is just a corpse. It is not living. What a person otherwise likes to dwell on endlessly in his head about beauty, sublimity, and grandeur about the physical world in his vicinity, these thoughts do not live. But in pre-earthly existence they were living. They were living, these thoughts, before we descended into the physical world, while we were still living as beings of soul and spirit in the soul-spiritual world. Thoughts such as we have here upon the earth were full of life there, and our physical body is the grave in which the dead world of thoughts is buried, when we descend down upon the earth. And here we carry the thought-corpses within us. And with the thought-corpses, not with fully living thoughts, we think about what is in our sensory surroundings here upon the earth. But before our descent down into this physical world, there was active in us fully alive thinking. My dear friends, one only needs, ever again and forever, with all of one's inner power and force, to thoroughly absorb this truth within. One comes to the point of developing in one's awareness a certainty that it is so. One learns to know the person as such. One learns to know him, so that one can gaze upon him, and say, there is the human head. [An outline of a head was drawn.] This human head is the base and the bearer for earthly corpse-thinking. They sprout forth, [It was drawn as an elongated form down to the right.] these thoughts, but dead, overlaid upon what has been taken in through the eyes, taken in through the ears, through the sense of warmth, taken in through other senses. This is how we regard thinking, in reference to the earth. But gradually we learn to penetrate through this thinking. Behind it in the spirit-cell of the human head, there still reverberates true, living thinking, the thinking in which we lived before we descended into the physical world. As one gazes at a person, then most certainly one gazes initially at his dead thinking [Drawn as a red part of the head.]. But behind this dead thinking, in the head's spirit-cell, is living thinking. [Drawn as a yellow part of the head.] And this living thinking has brought along the primal force to construct our brain. The brain is not the producer of thinking, but rather the product of pre-birth living thinking. [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] And so, if one were to gaze with the proper awareness behind what the person reveals in the superficiality of his head's earthly dead thinking, looking into what is behind the spirit-cell, then one might gaze upon the living thinking which certainly is there. This is similar to an act of will coming to one's attention, willing as such in the human musculoskeletal system, for it is certainly there in us, but sleeping. We simply don’t know how a thought goes down, when it has the intention, the will, to make this or that happen in our muscles and elsewhere. Looking at what lives in us as willing, we behold willing in the spirit-cell as the thinking that lies behind sensually aligned thinking. However, the willing we behold there, which we are becoming aware of as thinking, is the creative force for our thinking-organ. There this thinking is no longer just human-thinking, there this thinking is world-thinking. Understanding a person in this way, somehow being able to look behind earthly thinking, to the thinking which first made the foundation for earthly thinking in the brain, this allows sensual thinking to be cast off into the worldly void, and what emerges as an act of will is eternal thinking. All of this brings us into the state of mind, within which we can allow the mantric words to work in us.
The imagination must gradually stand before you, my dear friends, the imagination that from the top of your head are streaming out the dead thoughts that are aligned with the sensory world. Behind this lies true thinking, at first merely as darkness, shining behind and through the sensory thinking, the true thinking that actually configured the brain, into which a person descends out of the spiritual world into the physical. It is however a sort of willing. And one sees, then, how willing ascends from a person [A few white lines were drawn from below upward.], spreading out then in the head, and then becoming world-thoughts, because what lives in willing as thinking, is even now world-thinking. Toward this end one seeks ever more fully to understand, ever more inwardly to grasp, and ever more and more to bring to an inner anchorage the mantric thoughts which one places within the soul, with these words, in the following way. [The first stanza was written on the board.]
Please note that one must gaze behind the thinking. [Behind was underscored.]
Now one must be strong in soul, to allow the customary sensory thoughts to be cast off.
In these seven lines is contained most certainly the secret of human-thinking in its connection with the world-all. One must not make a pretense of this, in just grappling with these things with the intellect. One must allow these things to live as meditations in the heart's depth. And these words have strength. They are constructed harmonically. Thinking, willing, worldly-void, willing, and world-thought creating [These words were underlined on the board.] are joined together here in an inner organization of thought, so that they can work effectively upon imaginative awareness. Even as we can look behind the human head, the human head becoming a mediator in gazing into world-thought creating, so may we glance behind the human heart, as the representation, the physical representation, the imaginative representation of the human soul. Even as thinking is the abstract representation of the human spirit, so may we glance behind the human heart, as the representation of feeling. Even so we can gaze into feeling as it is related to the ways of earth in human earthly existence between birth and death. We can gaze into feeling, although here not behind feeling, but rather within feeling [drawing, a yellow oval]. Then, just as we may discern world-thought-creating behind spirit-cell-thinking, so we may grasp in feeling, the representation of the heart, we may truthfully grasp in feeling, streaming through feeling, something that goes in and out of a person from the entire cosmos. World-living is what we truly grasp, world-living that in men and women becomes human-soul-living. As it must stand there [in the first verse], "behind thinking's sensory light," so must it now be called, "into feeling's" in the second mantra, which must become harmonically interwoven together with the first.
[The second stanza was now written on the board.]
Feeling is merely a waking dream. Feelings are not so well known to a person as are thoughts. They become known to him as the builder of dreams. In such manner are feelings dreams while awake. And just so are they called.
Here [in the first verse] "willing" streams out of body's depths, although here streaming out of world distance into soul-weaving is "living." [The word living was underlined, and the mantric line was continued.]
[In the drawing four horizontal arrows were made.] Now similarly, as here [in the first verse], thinking should be cast out through strength of soul into the world-void, we now allow feeling’s dreams to waft away, in order, however, to discern in feeling's fabric of soul, what streams in as world living. When feeling's dreams fully fade away in sleep, when the individual human feeling ceases, then moving within a person is world-living.
[The writing was continued.]
Here [in the first verse] we need strength of soul; here [in the second verse] we need complete inner peace in sleep to allow feeling's dreams to fade away, and for heavenly world-living to stream into the human soul.
[The writing was continued, and the words "waft away", "world living", and human-being's-power" were underlined.]
In these seven lines is the whole secret of human feeling, how out of the unity into the trinity, it can itself contain self-understanding. Even so we can gaze out upon the human limbs, in which willing manifests. There, when we gaze out upon these human limbs, in which willing manifests, [On the drawing, a white arrow was drawn up in elongated form.], there we cannot say "look behind" or "look into", there we must say, "look over," for thinking streams down from the head in willing. In customary awareness a person is not able to observe it, but streaming from the head into the limbs are thoughts, in order that willing can work in the limbs. Then, however, when we observe willing working in the limbs, when we see in every arm movement, when we see in every leg movement, how the stream of willing streams, then we will also be aware, how in this willing a secret thinking lives, a thinking that grasps earthly existence immediately. Yes, it has been laid in the foundation of our being from earlier lives on earth, that just there, through the limbs, earthly existence is grasped, apprehended, so that through this apprehension we have present existence. Thinking sinks down into the limbs. And when we see it in the willful movement of the limbs, how it sinks down of its own accord, this thinking, then we may catch a glimpse of thinking in willing. [On the drawing, red was drawn downwards in elongated form.] As we gaze out with the soul, it otherwise would be concealed from us, how thinking lives in arms, in hands, in legs, in feet, and in toes, and then we must see that this thinking is actually light. It streams, thinking as light streams through arms and hands, through legs and toes. And by itself it transforms willing, which otherwise lives in the limbs as sleeping willing. It transforms willing, and thinking appears as willing’s magical essence, which is transferred into a person from an earlier life on earth, carried by the spirit, into the present life on earth.
It is a sort of conjuring, it is effective, magical, this unseen thinking in the limb's willing. A person begins to understand when he knows that thoughts, because we sleep in the will, that thoughts, even when not apparent in willing, are magically effective in the limbs as willing. And he begins to understand true magic, a magic that at first appears as thoughts, that lives through arms and hands, through legs and toes. [The third stanza was written on the board, during which the words "thinking", "transformed", "thinking", and "willing’s-magical-essence" were underlined.]
And in this is the secret of human willing, how such willing, formed out of the world-all, works magically, is contained in human beings. And so, my dear friends, my dear brothers and sisters, we will observe this as a foundation, for the time still to be announced, when I will build further upon this foundation. We will observe this as a foundation, using it in meditation, as we allow the mantric words ever and ever again to be drawn through the soul.
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| 270. Esoteric Instructions: Ninth Lesson
22 Apr 1924, Dornach Translated by John Riedel |
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| Therefore, each and every one who wishes to understand things about the spiritual world ever more and more correctly, must also understand inwardly. Of course, with healthy human understanding one can understand all of Anthroposophy, but understanding inwardly means to carry this ever more and more into one's inner life. |
| [In the first mantric sentence "pillars" was underlined.] Here we have the plastic building forces. [In the second mantric sentence "sculptors" was underlined.] |
| But then, when this has in fact been undertaken to completion, when we finally arrive at reverence through such an exercise, then the world ceases being physical for us. |
| 270. Esoteric Instructions: Ninth Lesson
22 Apr 1924, Dornach Translated by John Riedel |
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My dear friends! At first, without just taking note of it, let us allow to wash over our human souls, hearts, and minds the following admonition, which clarifies for human beings the ageless holy word of insight.
My friends, we can look up upon the vast reaches of the stars, and allow our gaze to rest upon what shines and sparkles down on us from that world of vast reaches, in the resting stars, the stars that show us specific forms in their groupings. We will, if we place ourselves within this beholding, within what works on us from the world of vast distances, we will win inner forces that are ever stronger and stronger. We will then, especially due to needing such force to maintain the soul free of what pertains to the body, we will then be especially advised to regard this gazing on the starry world as a purely inward activity. By this is meant, to have held the stars in view time and again so that the view is retained in our minds, so that we will no longer depend on gazing out into the external starry heavens in order to activate in our consciousness the mighty image of the dome of the heavens, beset with stars shining down on us. When this image emerges from our own inner being, when the soul strengthens itself, so as to build this image within itself, then it will be just in the condition needed, through the strengthened soul forces, to become free of corporeality, free of all pertaining to the body. And then we may gaze out distantly at all that radiates and streams through us from the wandering stars revolving about the earth. In their revolving, the wandering stars certainly entrain all that moves and exists in wind and weather. And once again, we can make ourselves an image of it all, retaining in mind and living inwardly in this revolving movement of enmeshed interwoven existence, as a second inner experience. And then, if we become attentive to all that chains us to the earth, to what happens there, to our being a dense body among other dense bodies, and if this so lives in us as a perception of our earth-bound existence, then we can make it active in the soul. And there it will be a third. And out of these three inner experiences we are enabled. Out of the one in which we unite with the resting stars, although now having won into it with resplendent moving living thoughts, we are enabled. Through the second, when in emerging from the course of our own path on earth into the world-all, emerging into the coursing of the movements of the wandering stars, which call meaningfully from space down to us, out of this, as in our perception of the resting stars within the resting human being, as we feel ourselves in this way coming into movement with the cosmos, we are enabled. And out of the third, arriving at the feeling of being bound to the earth, of somehow being affected by the force of earth, drawn by the earth to a spot on the earth, we are enabled. Out of this, gradually and properly, we are enabled, more and more, to commence our entry into the spiritual world. And this entry can be achieved today by each and every person. Of course, the question may then be brought up, why is it that so few people achieve this? The answer to this must be, that the majority of people do not experience this as intimately as is needed in order to come into the spiritual. They are scornfully disinclined to experience it so intimately. They like to experience things tumultuously, so that the spiritual world comes up to them with all the qualities of the sensory world. People today would easily be persuaded about the spiritual world, if for instance they were confronted with a table from the spiritual world. There is no table in the spiritual world, however, but rather only spiritual essences in the spiritual world. These must be perceived as such, just as that which in men and women itself is spiritual. And spiritual is what we can read in the resting stars, what we can feel in the movement of the wandering stars, and what we can sense of the force with which the earth holds us, maintaining us as people of the earth. Therefore, each and every one who wishes to understand things about the spiritual world ever more and more correctly, must also understand inwardly. Of course, with healthy human understanding one can understand all of Anthroposophy, but understanding inwardly means to carry this ever more and more into one's inner life. Whoever wishes to have an appreciation of this inner transformation of inner life must be determined to devote himself to these three feelings, or experiences, call them what you will, to these three feelings, experiences. And that is what flows from the spiritual world through this school to you, my dear brothers and sisters, that is what I would like to speak to you about today, how through intimacy in practice with one's own human nature, one may become more aware of human interconnectedness with the world, more aware than one is accustomed to in taking stock of external awareness. The first thing concerning this is to really come into intimate relationship with one's own human nature, though later in life, just as we certainly were to a very high degree when we were children. As children we were mostly just sense organs, eyes, ears. A child takes in everything that is happening in his surroundings, so much so, that the child's entire body seems to be a sensory organ. Everything is imitated, for everything reverberates within the child, and then in the same manner as it vibrates within, it will re-emerge. A child has his whole body as a sensory organ for only so long, but once we understand having had one's whole body as a body-organ of sensing, then later, as wakeful human beings, we can renew it; we can renew the body as an organ of sensing. A child really retains this inner sensory ability for a long time, and we all carry it along still, we still preserve it, for it has not yet been set aside by the forces of the earth. And it is certainly something wholly wonderful, in the evolution of human beings, that their sensory existence is preserved even during the effective penetration of the forces of earth, and that this sensory existence can be made fully and remarkably alive. The moment a child stands erect, in order to begin to walk, so that his movement falls into line with the forces of earth, the child must then rely on his own inner equilibrium, and at this moment his intimate sensory existence ceases. A person cannot really remember back to this first step into humanity, much less remember feeling his whole person just as an organ of sense. But we must be filled with this again, if we wish to take on human life ever more and more, we must be filled with being a sense organ as such. As a whole human being we must be filled with this feeling of just experiencing. We must experience ourselves in this way, as a touching-tasting-organ, as a solitary great touching-tasting-organ that is our entire body. Now let us imagine grasping something or other, my brothers and sisters, that presses in upon you. You take the impression as a reality. As a matter of course you take the superficial quality to be a reality whenever you touch or taste something. But in reality, you touch and taste always, for by means of your entire body, from top to bottom, positioned on the earth, with the soles of your feet you touch inwardly and taste the earth below. You are just so used to it, that you don't notice it. When you begin to take note of it, then you feel yourself to be a person first standing, just standing within the forces of the earth. And just so comes the admonition at the threshold to the spiritual world. [It was written on the board.]
With this we have made the first step in allowing this inner experience to work effectively in us. Then in turn we can feel ourselves as the person who senses, who touches. We can experience this tasting, this sensing, we can feel ourselves inwardly as the person in whom this touching is enmeshed and lives. When we ascend to this, allowing this sensing to fill our hearts and minds, then don't take in only the earth forces as a reality, but also begin to take in as a reality the vibratory-water-forces, the forces of fluidity, that beat as waves enmeshed within our body's blood and fluids. And in these forces, we may then feel, in all that is flowing within us, that is beating within and is enmeshed in fluidity, our close connection to the etheric in the world. [It was written on the board.]
If we had only earth-touching-forces in our human frame, we would be constituted in a way that would evermore tend down toward decay. The water forces in us, however, literally mold us out of the universal ether into well-formed human bodies. Fixed earth forces hold sway in all that is fixed in us, where the earth alone has influence. In all that is fluid in us, the whole wide world of the etheric has influence. After this we may enter more deeply, as a third step, into what is moving and living in fluidity. We can feel it inwardly, for example, when we feel our breath. Then we will discover how we as human beings are continually nourished, sustained by the essence of breathing, by the essence emerging from the air. We would be helpless children in the world, were we not continually infused with the forces of air, nourishing us, making us out of helpless children into men and women. [It was written on the board.]
And having in this manner ascended to the third step of inner experience, we may now come to the fourth, in which we feel inwardly warmed through and through, in which we become aware on our own of warmth enfolding us, warmth that lives in the breath, that lives in everything aeriform in us. For only through the aeriform moving and living in us, will warmth be generated in us, physically internalized within us. But just what lives inwardly in us as warmth we can arrive at with thoughts. And here is a very significant secret of human nature. My dear brothers and sisters, you cannot arrive with thoughts, but rather only by the feeling of inner-touch, how earth-forces affect you and are pillars for you. You cannot arrive with thoughts, but rather only by inwardly experiencing, how water-forces in you are plastic sculptors. You cannot arrive with thoughts, but rather only by feeling inwardly, how air powers in you are nurturers. You can be thankful for these nurturers, you can love these nurturers, but you cannot arrive at their immediacy with thoughts. But warmth, however, a person can arrive there by meditating, by sinking down with thoughts into the warmth of meditation, by really thoroughly living within as a being of warmth. A doctor may come with his thermometer, but only measures external warmth. Just as individual places on the body can be distinguished, so the inner warmth of the individual organs can be distinguished. One's thoughts can be directed down into individual organs, and there one can find differentiated the whole inner warmth-organism. One arrives at oneself as an organism of warmth by wrapping oneself with thoughts. When one has arrived there, however, one has a quite extraordinary feeling. Bring this feeling, my dear brothers and sisters, before your souls here and now. Just think, you arrive there by focusing your thoughts, in becoming absorbed into your organism, thereby arriving at differentiated warmth, the warmth of the lungs, the warmth of the liver, the warmth of the heart, of all in you in reality in your essential nature that is given by the breath of God. You arrive there with your thoughts. You know now what thought is. Before, you did not know what thought is. At this point, you have arrived, for you know that thought, as it is drawn down into warmth, makes the formerly bland warmth flame up, it makes it blaze up. For a thought, well, it appears to you in customary life in the untrustworthy manner of merely being abstract. When you sink it down into absorption into your own body, the thought then appears to you as if it is glowing, radiating, and permeating into the lungs, the heart, and the liver. As the light, going out from your brow, extends inwardly, the thought is thoroughly illuminated, differentiated within into the various nuances of color, into the individual organs. One cannot simply say, I am thinking about the differentiation of my warmth. One must say, through thoughts I am illuminating myself about the differentiation of my warmth. [It was written on the board.]
And then all this can be combined together. All that lies in these eight lines can be combined together, so that in a certain way, what one has undergone is combined and once again allowed to work effectively on one's soul in the following words. [It was written on the board, the elements after the corresponding mantric lines.]
In this way take measure of yourself, delving and streaming within, strengthening yourself in concentrating on the body. But please take note, this strengthening, this taking stock, passes beyond simple physical feeling. It passes into moral feeling. Here we have first the pillars for the person, the physical pillars. [In the first mantric sentence "pillars" was underlined.] Here we have the plastic building forces. [In the second mantric sentence "sculptors" was underlined.] It is still somewhat physical, although infused with the etheric. Here we have guardians, nurturers. [In the third mantric sentence "nurturers" was underlined.] It is already somewhat moralistic. For as one comes up and out of the water into the air, one finds that the beings present in the air are infused thoroughly with the etheric. And in fire we have not only guardians, but helpers ["helpers" was underlined in the fourth mantric sentence.], comrades, beings congenial with us. However, even as one can feel into the body in this manner, one can also feel one's way into the soul itself. For this, however, one must not concentrate upon the elements, but upon what courses about the earth in the wandering stars, sweeping along with them the currents of air and sea. One’s physicality is felt, within one’s spirituality, when what stands apart is intermixed in the body. All pertaining to the soul, however, one simply experiences directly. We shall develop this in more detail in later lessons. Today we shall merely describe allowing, experiencing this feeling of penetration into the soul. [It was written on the board.]
Again, this can be brought together in the sentence:
Moving on, connecting with, experiencing the spiritual within us, that will be attained when we raise our spirit to the resting stars that beam down upon us in their grouped formations, in their constellations, in what becomes for us the handwriting of the heavens. When we realize just what is inscribed in this way in the starry heavens, then we become aware of our own spiritual nature within, of spirituality which speaks not just from person to person, but rather which speaks from the entire universe. [It was written on the board.]
Brought together:
Not with common sentences, nor with common feelings, do we come to this, to coming out and beyond ever more and more with our soul, our heart, and to crossing over into the universe. Instead, we come to this solely in just this certain way, by grasping element upon element, the movement of the wandering stars, the significance of the resting stars. In so doing this, we bond to the world. And we will notice, as we do this, engaged in such exercises, as we complete the first part, we feel life in us, the life of the world. [Along the front of the first eight mantric lines was written:]
As we complete the second part, we feel love in us for all the world. [Along the front of the tenth and eleventh lines was written:]
As we complete the third part, we feel piety within ourselves.
And it is really an ascension of the human being from life through love to piety, to a truly religious experience of the world. This can be achieved by means of such mantric words. But then, when this has in fact been undertaken to completion, when we finally arrive at reverence through such an exercise, then the world ceases being physical for us. Then we say with complete inner certainty, the physicality of the world is mere appearance, maya, for the world is everywhere through and through spirit. As men and women, we belong to this spirit. And when we feel ourselves to be spirit in the world of spirit, then we are on the other side of the threshold of the spiritual world. Then, however, when we are on the other side of the threshold of the spiritual world, then we perceive just how here our body, through its external bodily force, how our body holds thinking, feeling, and willing together, but how, the moment we become body-free in our experiencing, then thinking, feeling, and willing are no longer a unity, but instead are a trinity. For it is so, it is so for us, insofar as we bond ourselves to the earthen authority of earth, water, air, and fire, if and when we lead ourselves there in will, and through our will would become one with the earth. It is somewhat more, feeling love in our souls toward the movements of the wandering stars, in other words, toward the spirit beings who live therein. It is so, that we experience there the circling might of wide-open space as a feeling. And when we can say, that the Sun bestirs itself in the feeling of wide-open space, Mercury bestirs itself in the feeling of wide-open space, Mars bestirs itself in the feeling of wide-open space, then we have grasped feeling in its universal existence sundered from thinking and sundered from willing. And when we can take hold of thinking, so that we bring freedom from physical reality to thoughts, then it is as if our thinking were to fly out, out to the resting stars and itself rest among the resting stars. And we may say to ourselves, when we have arrived at the other side of the threshold, that my thinking rests in the resting stars, my feeling bestirs itself in the wandering stars, my willing articulates with the forces of the earth. And thinking, feeling, and willing, in the universal world-all are split asunder. And ever and again they must be reconnected. Here on earth, one does not need to actively bind thinking, feeling, and willing together, since they are already together, by means of the unity of the physical body, for in the physical human being they are bound together. Thinking, feeling, and willing would perpetually come apart, were they not being held together by a person's physical nature, without the person willing it or knowing anything about it. However now they are torn apart so thoroughly, thinking, feeling, and willing, that thinking rests overhead with the fixed stars, feeling circles with the planets, and willing is intermingled down with the forces of earth. And we must bring up our inner forces firmly, enthusiastically so that the three lying far apart are reconnected through our own forces into a unity. This we must do, and through a sort of mantric formulation we can perceive a sort of unity in thinking, feeling, and willing. Thinking, which is off among the resting stars, can be put in touch to some extent with feeling and willing. Feeling, circling among the wandering stars, can be put in touch to some extent with willing and thinking. Willing, so bound to the earth, can be put in touch to some extent with thinking and feeling. We must gaze out upon the resting stars, taking care to say, there rests your thinking. But I bring the entire starry heaven into motion, as is done otherwise by the planets with feelings. Slowly I bring the starry heavens out there into motion in spirit. As I feel myself immobilized by the starry heaven, then I would like to break out, I would like to become one with the starry heaven as an entire human being. So, I have incorporated feeling and willing into the thinking bound to the resting stars. Then I gaze into the wandering stars, and feel that my own feelings wander in these wandering stars. But I will endeavor, the moment I gaze about, to hold them firmly as they shift and change with the wandering stars, to hold them as firmly as the fixed stars elsewhere stand. And with the whole center of my being, with all pertaining to the heart and lungs, I will become one with the entire planetary system. And so have I attached thinking and willing to feeling. If I were to become aware through these mantric formulations of how bound I am to the earth as a human being, then I really ought to admix feeling and thinking into this union with the earth. I should set the earth into motion in myself in thought, so that I am to her as a wandering star gliding along, oblivious to her heaviness, my union with the earth being so, that I could carry the earth through the universe. So feeling is admixed with willing. Thinking I drag in when I travel with the earth in my thoughts, but then again, I can hold it still, making the earth itself into a resting star through my own meditative power of thought. When I carry out such a meditation, and ever and again carry it out, then I come upon myself as a person in the universal world-all external to the body and little by little I approach it with intimacy, with feeling. To this end, my dear brothers and sisters, one allows a mantric formulation to work effectively, and as such it can work effectively, especially forcefully, on the soul. [It was written on the board.]
That means as meditation, as musing.
As a duality:
As a trinity:
Put in this way the human body appears in its true constitution, its true gestalt. This sounds forth just so from the spiritual world, the initiate experiences this within the spiritual world, made fast within words. In this sense they are mantric words, and the experiences, to which they point, are entered into in the spiritual world. To this end it is guidance, really, into the spiritual world, when your souls just allow the words to work effectively.
Then, when it becomes ever clearer and clearer to you, my dear brothers and sisters, just what lies within such mantric words, then you will, when you ever and ever again come to these lessons, you will come with greater understanding, which means that you will hearken here to these words with ever greater world experience.
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| 270. Esoteric Instructions: Tenth Lesson
25 Apr 1924, Dornach Translated by John Riedel |
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| And a picture of this should be developed, of what a person’s soul can undergo along the way from an experience of the world of physical sensation, the world known through the senses, to an experience of the spiritual world. |
| And one should really appreciate that attaining this common understanding is the beginning of esoteric pursuit. One should not overlook this point. When, by means of this attainment, one goes out and acts in accordance with this initiatory common understanding, which is given in this school, convened for this purpose, then one will be following the esoteric path ever more and more closely. |
| The meditation in its entirety progresses as a dialogue, line for line, with one in dark spiritual depths under the dominion of spiritual beings, standing there in the lines at the top of the verses, speaking to us. |
| 270. Esoteric Instructions: Tenth Lesson
25 Apr 1924, Dornach Translated by John Riedel |
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My dear friends! Included in esoteric development, and in true insight, is all that may be found along the way of a person’s attempting to attain an understanding of what it means to live and actually exist in a world in which the senses and the entire corporeal organization are not mediators, and so therefore to live in one’s spiritual-soul nature, which really is a person’s natural state as a member of the spiritual-soul world. Now to this end, and in general to attain this, to live in the world in a spiritual-soul manner, to this end the multifaceted, more or less meditative soul-life exercises have come, exercises for our souls that are to be pursued vigorously and tenaciously. And a picture of this should be developed, of what a person’s soul can undergo along the way from an experience of the world of physical sensation, the world known through the senses, to an experience of the spiritual world. A picture should initially be developed in these class-sessions, by means of the various deliberations and individual verses appended to the deliberations, a certain picture that includes the possibilities and the prerequisites, from one to the next, of how they are enabled into becoming objects of meditation. When, after the elapse of a certain time, these Class lessons, which really are impartations from the spiritual world, as I have very often already spoken about, these Class lessons will come together, so that what can be described in the lessons and accomplished through meditation, and it is a karmic fulfillment for those who can accomplish it, what can be accomplished through these meditations will come together as a clear picture and will become for you a first step in esoteric development. And now it proceeds, from the very different considerations cultivated here in previous lessons, already put forth, how the person in this way can gradually lift himself out of his earth existence-awareness into an experience of being with the cosmos, the feeling, the development of an inner sense that can carry him to the ends of the world, to where the spiritual may be confronted. As long as a person shrinks from this, only entering into a relationship merely through reasoning and understanding with the things around him that are sense-perceptible, persisting in this manner it is impossible, taking the soul-spiritual so lightly, it is impossible for him to truly connect to spirit-soulfulness, the content of which most certainly is the human approach to truth. You see, my dear friends, as I have very often stressed, healthy human understanding can grasp it all. If one just exerts oneself with sufficient strength, free of preconceptions, one can grasp all that Anthroposophy will present. But straightaway in the pursuit of this apprehension by healthy human understanding, the question immediately comes to mind of whether any particular individual is in reality karmically called today to take part in Anthroposophy, or whether not. You see, there are two possibilities. It may happen that a person hearkens unto the content of anthroposophical truth, and such a person may allow the content of anthroposophical truth to work effectively on himself, so as to find himself illuminated. It is of course self-understood, my friends, that all here present belong to this group of men and women. For those who do not belong to this group of men and women, but nonetheless somehow take part in the class as members, these people would certainly not be taking part honorably. And all, all initially rests on honor in esoteric life, on a person’s soul and spirit manner of being completely saturated with honor. There is another group of men and women however, that finds what is offered by Anthroposophy to be fantasy, belonging more or less to the visionary realm. People in this group show, through their attitudes, that their karma does not align them with the others, with those who with healthy human understanding far removed from corporeality and the senses can grasp truth free of the senses, who can grasp inner knowing free of the senses. Being bound together, either in having the sense in common of being bound to corporeality, or of having the sense of not being so bound, this certainly constitutes a great differentiation today between human beings. For if and when you honestly identify, innately within yourself, the sort of common sense grasped in Anthroposophy, then this common sense of Anthroposophy is grasped in its immediacy, regardless of one’s general liking for it. And this common sense, grasped honorably in Anthroposophy, is actually the beginning of esoteric pursuit. And one should really appreciate that attaining this common understanding is the beginning of esoteric pursuit. One should not overlook this point. When, by means of this attainment, one goes out and acts in accordance with this initiatory common understanding, which is given in this school, convened for this purpose, then one will be following the esoteric path ever more and more closely. As the case may be, someone may find this or that meditative verse given here personally suitable and applicable, and may utilize it. In doing this, however, one must do it in accordance with the given explanations and clarifications, which fully delineate and characterize the utilization of these meditative verses for inner human life. Now today I would like once again to give something of a helpful nature, which can help to bring people out of their bodies, if only as a sort of jolt. I would like to give something that might not have been noticed or appreciated up to now. It is about really perceiving quite a bit more deeply and good-heartedly. Although this can also happen merely in thoughts, it is about perceiving and taking note of the mineral environment around us, and of the plant environment, and of whatever else is in our immediate earth environment. It is about making ourselves directly aware of how this earthly environment is close to us. In relationship to us it is very close. It is about how we as people of earth, bearing our physical embodiment, are closely, very closely, related to everything around us, with everything that has mineral qualities, plant-like qualities, animal qualities, and so on. And so we might say, with inner honesty, we might ask ourselves the question, what is this all about? Why do I take on the physical substance of the earth after I have been born? Why do I keep dragging myself through earth existence from birth to death until my organism is no longer capable of struggling with its earth-bound material nature, until my physical life on earth comes to an end with death? In order to comprehend this personal human conundrum, we must seek out and perceive in depth our closely associated physical surroundings. In doing this we will also come to know more and more what sort of departure point that esoteric life can be, for we will feel, in doing things in physical life upon the earth, we will feel that in reality we ourselves are blind, as if groping about in the dark. And please consider carefully, my dear brothers and sisters, please consider carefully the people nurtured into adulthood today in the customary way. They are born, then they become situated in earthly life, and then they become known purely through the external relationships associated with this or that sort of work. They don’t really grasp the inter-relationships of their work with the whole of human existence. It probably doesn’t cross their minds at all, except in knowing that they work in order to eat. It doesn’t cross their minds, truth be told, that the plants they eat contain cosmic forces from the depths of space, forces that wend their way through the human organism, and in a certain sense, by eating they bring into being a cosmic inner development and progression. Most people today cannot identify at all with this first glance leading away from the materialism of the times. They stand firm, at least initially, in the simple observation of earth relationships, and in life they remain spiritually blind to what lives in the darkness, to what is the starting point of a true esoteric development. And then one may then turn one’s glance away, turning from what lives all around about on the earth, whether engaged merely in thoughts or in the reality of it, one may then turn one’s glance up and out into the heavens, the heavens beset with stars. One gazes at the wandering stars, one gazes at the fixed stars, one is filled with and dwells in the unending grandeur out there confronting a person while gazing out at the world-all, at the universe. One says inwardly that as a human being, I am innately related to and interconnected with what is there resplendent in outer space, just as I am innately related to and interconnected with what surrounds me in the material world. In reality, in this outward glance at the heavens beset with stars, we have the feeling of not just living in the darkness, but rather also of ourselves becoming free in living in the darkness, of our vaulting up with our spiritual-soul nature into and among the stars, vaulting ourselves out and up to what is in place there, to the stars in their grouped images. And please note, if a person can really and enthusiastically take up this viewing of the starry heavens, then the starry heavens will become an overabundance of imaginations. You have probably seen various old paintings, in which not merely starry groups are portrayed, but in which the star-groups are formed up together in animal symbols. Someone has drawn the group of stars standing in Aries or in Taurus not just as star-groupings, but rather as symbolic arrangements picturing a ram, a bull, and so forth. Today people think that of course this was present as a free-form unfolding of the will of the ancient inhabitants of the earth, and due to the constellations having been called by these names, then the pictures were made accordingly. This was certainly not the case, but rather just the opposite, for in ancient times, the shepherds on the moors were not simply gazing out upon the star-beset heavens with physical eyes, but rather, they were also deeply immersed in dream-awareness or in sleep-awareness while out there with their herds, and they were wandering eyes-closed in soul out in the depths of space. And what they saw there was not just the star-groupings of visible observation. They took in the actuality, which was somewhat later differently portrayed in pictures. They took in the actuality of the imaginations, the actuality of the depths of space filled with truth. Today, we can no longer return, creeping back to the instinctive clairvoyance just described in such a manner, to the actual experiences of simple shepherds of long ago. But we can do something else. With a great deal of concerted effort, we can place ourselves, whether in thoughts or in reality, into the starry heavens themselves. We can perceive the depths, and at the same time the enormity of majesty shining down upon us, presenting itself there before us as illumination. And we can come gradually to revere what spreads out there before us in the depths of space. And the reverence itself, the fervor of reverence, is what can call forth out of our souls an experience, an experience of the external sensory image of the stars being swept away and the starry heaven becoming an imagination for us. And then, when the starry heaven becomes an imagination for us, then we feel ourselves being taken up, up and along by our soul-gazing. You see, up to the time of Plato, when gazing about, one still also felt something quite different in regard to the physical eyes. Plato himself described seeing in such a way, so that when looking out upon a man and seeing in the sense described by Plato, something flowed out from the eyes, a tracing of the man spread out, in ancient times, forming a spread-out connection. Something streamed forth from the eyes and encompassed the other person. The etheric streamed out. As when I stretch out my physical hand and grasp something, and I know in the grasping that with my physical hand I am connected, just so in the times of ancient instinctive clairvoyance, a person knew that etheric substance went out of the eyes and fastened upon what was being looked upon. Today a person merely believes that the eyes are here, and that what is seen is over there. Over there the seen object sends light-waves out through the intervening space, waves that impinge on the eyes, impinging in some way or another so as to be taken in by the soul. Please note that materialists most definitely speak of the soul, but it is placed way down within, and not at the forefront, and they speak of this impingement as somehow being taken in by the soul as truth. But this is not really the case. It is not simply a working into the person from what is present around him. It is also, quite definitely, an outward streaming of a human being’s inner etheric nature. And we should take our etheric body as the truth in its connectedness to the great world around us, when the star-beset heaven becomes the great folio of the world, the tome on which the imaginative mysteries of world existence have been inscribed, if and when we have the ability to behold it. The perception may come to us, however, that when present here upon the earth, present in this robust sensory reality, that in reality it is a sort of blindness. It is living in darkness. When your heart and mind soar aloft, you live within what otherwise just shines upon you from the great world all around. You live within the shining of the great surrounding world. But you take your own etheric existence-awareness out there into the broad flowing streaming of this shining of the world. You yourself go along with your etheric existence-awareness. And the shining ceases to be a shining. It can no longer remain nothingness, when we ourselves sink completely into it. We extend our inner experience of reality out into this shining. And this experience (about which I have written) becomes an enmeshment, a weaving into the shining of the cosmos. Previously we lived blind in the darkness of earth existence. Now we live out there, our etheric existence-awareness having been woven into the shining of the cosmos. So, we can have this experience, that we weave into the shining of the cosmos. Initially I will draw this as a picture: [It was drawn on the board.] the life of blindness in the darkness of existence-awareness on earth [as a white arch], living out and beyond in the far reaches of the world [gold rays], then the shining of stars at the end, in which world-imaginations can be perceived by us in reverence [red waves]. But having woven ourselves out and beyond, we are certainly out there now in our etheric nature within this imaginative fabric of the world. When we actually get to being within the imaginative fabric of the world, we are certainly no longer in our physical bodies. We have struggled through the empty ether into the experience of world-imaginations. It happens straightforwardly, you see, as when someone here in the physical world writes something down, and having learned to read, then just reads it. Through our weaving out and beyond into the cosmos, since the gods have inscribed for us world-imaginations in the cosmos, we arrive there and we see these world-imaginations from the other side [drawn as arrows in the first drawing]. We live first here upon the earth [second drawing, in the inner circle], then we soar aloft up to world-imaginations [second drawing, outside the wavy circle], but there we read from the outside. [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] Yes, my dear friends, brothers and sisters, the zodiac speaks a meaningful speech, if and when looked upon from the other side and not from the earth. It speaks as Ares the Ram, Taurus the Bull, Gemini the Twins, Cancer the Crab, and Leo the Lion, if and when one encompasses it from the outside. And for our understanding, it is a deed, this encompassing of it from the outside. And we begin to read the mysteries of the world. And what we read are the deeds of high spiritual beings. In a novel we read about the deeds of men and women. When looking and seeing things from the other side of the zodiac, things are seen otherwise than as seen from the earth outward, as seen by Moses, who always looked upon God merely from behind, from the earth outward. Initiation consists of seeing from the other side. It is not merely a sort of outward gazing. It becomes a reading. And what one reads are the spiritual deeds of the high spiritual beings, who have brought it all into its present state. And when we read in this silence sufficiently long, when we nourish and broaden our souls inwardly in this reading, then we may begin to hear in a spiritual manner. Then the gods speak to us. Then we dwell within the spiritual world, when the gods speak to us. Now look, my dear brothers and sisters, it can be done, as the adept can tell you; the soul can broaden itself out and beyond, can be enmeshed in the depths of the cosmos, can come to world-imaginations, can gaze from the other side upon the deeds of gods. It is so; it is possible to hearken in a spiritual manner unto the gods’ speech. But perhaps someone really gets to the state the adept has described, really deepening, deepening oneself in understanding, deepening oneself in full-blooded courage, deepening in the heart, not simply approaching it stubbornly, not merely saying, well, if I could do it, well, then it would also please me, it would interest me, but I can’t worry about it now. When someone quite differently really takes this description up, takes it up as something that is actually possible, when one begins to take it up as something not just to be considered, but to be revered and loved, then one can take it up as a meditation. Ever and again it then becomes one’s way, finally, to actually come into the esoteric life. And you will find this way, if and when in meditating you deepen yourself in the words. [The first lines were written on the board.]
With the necessary feeling this inner meditative way is lived, experienced, works wonders in, and transforms the human soul. It must flow rhythmically again and again through the soul, for it actually leads a person through to his own world-being, contained within himself. But it is necessary that it should come to light within properly, so that after one has spoken it quite a while in one’s head, it should also be taken up by, should start coursing within one’s heart, for it is there that one makes the journey out into the etheric world-all, and then into the spiritual world-all on the other side of the etheric world-all. It is necessary, in coursing along such a pathway, to take one’s heart along in one’s experiencing, and to allow it to rule, to allow one’s heart to rule in the perceiving, so that it can join according to its nature in the translation of oneself out and beyond. But in coming into ruling our perceptions properly in this way, it is good initially, in traveling along this whole meditative pathway, it is good thoroughly and inwardly to observe what lies in these words.
You should try to imagine this as if someone were speaking to you from a great spiritual distance, as if you were not thinking it, but rather as if you were listening to and hearing another being speaking to you. One should imagine, really imagine, that another being is speaking to you out of unknown depths. Then the right feeling may be developed for what one hears here. This proper feeling lives in the second part of the verse. [The second part of the verse was written on the board.]
In that I am aware, that most certainly I am living upon the earth in the darkness as if blind, then I yearn to get out. Out there, the shining of the stars is my consolation, broadening my very existence.
Now from the other side,
And when I read them,
Now you know how to utilize this correctly. Call this inner meditation up with vigor into your heart and mind as you are employing it. As if out of depths of spirit, as if someone were speaking to you, in this manner listen to and hear the lines of the upper verse, bringing to bear on each line the corresponding feeling, so that you experience in the meditation the following: first listen carefully to it, then bring it vigorously to the forefront of your heart and mind as a perception, then again listen carefully, and again bring it vigorously into your heart and mind, … and so forth. [During the speaking of the following lines, connecting lines consisting of long curves were drawn on the board connecting lines 1 and 5, 2 and 6, 3 and 7, and 4 and 8.]
This meditation is at first a dialogue, a meditation in which the first line is always taken objectively, while the second streams out as a feeling from the heart. Then, while trying once again to bring them to the forefront, enmeshed and working in each other, try to experience with moderate force of will the experience contained within the dialogue. [The third part of the verse was now developed and written as lines 9, 10, 11, and 12.] From depths of spirit sounds forth:
The heart answers:
And the will perceives the impulse in the dialogue between lines 1 and 5:
Then one remembers back, after having progressed through this dialogue, to the interchange between lines 2 and 6, and to the experience contained within:
Then one remembers back, while carrying all this, to what sounds forth from spirit depths, and the answer of heart-felt courage:
And the resultant experience by means of the will:
distantly from the spiritual world. And now the most sublime, wherein one feels in dialogue with the gods themselves, wherein the gods not merely allow a reading, but rather actually speak:
It not only witnesses me, it begets, it brings forth, engenders, delivers me. Now let us envision the entire meditation. The meditation in its entirety progresses as a dialogue, line for line, with one in dark spiritual depths under the dominion of spiritual beings, standing there in the lines at the top of the verses, speaking to us. The heart always gives answer:
Now I remember each individually and connect the outflow of the will to it, as a memory of what has already happened.
This is the correct way to proceed, to come to the stage of the dialogue in the meditation, the dialogue in memory, and then by means of the will to a reinforcement of this memory. When one actually starts with an inward demeanor of devotion, doubly so, with one’s entire soul inwardly constituted and brought into conformity with what I have just written, when one inwardly envisions it and begins to experience it, when one takes it up not as a mechanical meditation, but rather as a true experience of the soul, then setting things up in this way specifically awakens a relationship of the soul with the spiritual world. One must really appreciate, however, even in the last set of verses, the specific manner I have just described. It should be experienced as discourse and answer, the discourse of the spirit and the answering discourse of the heart. But one must properly appreciate that initially one’s awareness, which will certainly be attained, is extinguished through the darkness of earth. One must feel as if awareness is overcome, in an instant of extinguishing sleep, and as if there in the second line there is an awakening, as if after the awakening, the calling of the gods to return to them is heard by us, as if one feels, henceforth, that the gods are calling out to us. They are summoning us, out of their own being’s word emerging from the word of worlds, in order to place us as beings of soul and spirit in the spiritual world, there to bear us, there to bring us forth, there to engender us. When these nuances of inner experience are played out in soul, attention centered on the spiritual beings who speak to us, our heart’s vitality brought forth in devotion to the spiritual beings, then yes, then our souls are in motion, and gradually our souls are in fact brought onto the esoteric path. And we must be clear, as we experience the three stanzas in our souls, as well as we are able, in the manner described, we must be clear that something subliminal, yet powerful, is coming into being in our souls. If we would only live faithfully in these three stanzas, as I have described, our soul would thereby be fashioned, unbeknownst to us, so that when the first line is intoned, we would be just at the point of origin of life on earth, where the etheric body has just been constituted. Were we to picture this with quick inner vitality, then it would sound forth from the spirit.
Then more or less unconsciously we hearken unto and approach in spirit the moment our etheric body was constituted. And out of pre-earthly existence, out of the existence between death and a new birth, a force is working in our hearts, which we bring to bear in simple purity.
And yearning after the spiritual is without doubt a legacy of ours from pre-earthly existence. And it is always the same, when placed at the beginning of earth existence, what is felt within the heart and works outwardly, that is what flames up in us from pre-earthly existence.
Here we again align with the beginning of our life on earth. The proper consolation, perceived by us, can be given to us by the shining of the stars. Through it, we will be placed back into our hearts’ answer.
Again, there is a return to one’s beginnings on earth:
The heart remembers being instructed by high spiritual beings in pre-earthly existence.
under whose care and among whom I lived and moved, before I descended down upon the earth.
We hearkened unto the gods between death and a new birth. We perceive now that what is spoken by the gods is not to be imparted as that which is spoken by men and women. We bear witness, we recognize7 that the gods’ speech is fashioning, creating, quickening, making:8
Finally, if and when we can appreciate it, then the right sense also comes into lines 9,10,11, and 12.
[Line 9 was written down once again, just to the right of the curved line connecting lines 1 and 5 together.]
it puts out, extinguishes my present earth-life, as I am transported back past the time between death and being reborn, back into my earlier incarnation. Then I understand, this is why my awareness has been extinguished, for until now my awareness was that of the present incarnation. The moment I fall asleep I will be transported back again, so that I can divine and sense myself moving within my earlier earth-incarnation.
[Line 10 was written down once again, just to the right of the curved line connecting lines 2 and 6 together.]
I will be placed back as I was then, as I was in the preceding incarnation, if it were to wake me. For me, it depends on karma, it depends on what is appropriate for my destiny, for me it depends on the other side.
[Line 11 was written down once again, just to the right of the curved line connecting lines 3 and 7 together.]
[Line 12 was written down once again, just to the right of the curved line connecting lines 4 and 8 together.]
[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] All that I am becomes clear to me, when into my present existence, my earlier earth existence floods in, gleams, moves, rumbles, becomes enmeshed. Then there I am. At first, I am present merely as a future becoming, germinative, only to achieve full apparency when eventually passing through the portal of death. Then from the previous earth existence into the present something gleams, interpenetrates, works effectively, making me into the human being I really am, summoning me to be the human being I really am. Thoroughly infused with this, with its reality, so that really, while we seem to be in the customary world of physical earth existence, our soul takes the journey back, back until it arrives at the former earth life, then we will come to know the importance of what we experience in such a thing. And in the awareness of this importance, that as a gleaming-stream washes through the whole of our thinking, feeling, and willing, in this awareness we will then be infused in our meditation with the feeling of enchantment. This enchantment is essential, for in this way the meditation works effectively in the right way. One may name it an inner feeling of enchantment, a magical feeling, on the grounds that nowhere else on the earth do we find such a comparable feeling, for this feeling is totally disconnected from all corporeality. Even if we cannot yet come out of the physical body with our thinking, with our imagination, this feeling of enchantment, this magical feeling that we experience, coming out of the importance of all that we are doing soulfully, this stands there in the pure spiritual world. In this feeling of enchantment, in this magical feeling we experience the pure spiritual-soulful element. There we stand, drawn into the spiritual-soulful world. In such manner, as we experience it, esoteric striving is fulfilled for us. And that, for the time being, that is what I have attempted to lay before your souls today, my dear brothers and sisters.
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