Introduction

Stuttgart, 2 January, 1911

We must take esoteric life seriously, and so an esoteric class must always be something sacred for us. We should never take it to be something ordinary. Probably not all of us were aware of the seriousness that is necessary when we asked to be admitted to this esoteric circle. But now we should place this ever more before our souls and strive for a connection with the spiritual worlds so that we don't fall back into everyday life again.

One should always look upon the exercises that are given to us as ones that come from the masters. An esoteric should watch himself and his feelings and to especially focus on self-knowledge. Most people — and we are probably among them — are living in big delusions about themselves. We must especially pay attention to egoism. We often imagine that we're doing something selflessly, or we feel hatred and envy towards someone that we haven't become aware of yet. Then as esoterics we think that we must tell him the "truth," and that we don't have to take this or that from him. As soon as such feelings arise in us, one should realize that one is living under big delusions whose deeper cause is always egoism. Such feelings always become manifest together with a feeling of warmth that goes through the etheric body's warmth ether and works right into the physical body through the blood. Such feelings always have a harmful effect on men and world evolution.

The hierarchies who direct karmic connections work in such a way that they appoint special beings who destroy certain upbuilding effects in us, and therewith have a destructive effect on the soul and indirectly on the body. These are Luciferic beings who are appointed for this kind of work.

When we have correct self-knowledge and see our own badness, an ice-cold feeling goes through us instead of the aforementioned feeling of warmth that satisfies us. All the passions and desires that get satisfied in us express themselves in the described feeling of warmth, in contrast to the feeling of coldness that appears in true self-knowledge.

The Luciferic beings that thereby approach a pupil destructively reveal themselves to a clairvoyant as certain hosts, whose leader is Samael. These beings who don't look human at all are always perceptible for a spiritual eye. If on awakening, we have a feeling of disgust, as is often the case in an esoteric pupil, then such a feeling can almost always be ascribed to the egoism that often sits unrecognized deep in subconscious soul depths.

We must also direct our attention to everything that's connected with untruthfulness. Thanks to our education, we don't tell any big lies, but we always have the inclination to seem to be better than we really are. Or if the truth could endanger us, we prefer to keep quiet about it and to conceal the facts. This kind of thing also has a harmful effect on world events and therewith on the men themselves. Such untruths work on our astral body and then on our light ether. From there such harmful influences work on the physical body, especially on the nervous system. The Luciferic beings who are connected with this and whose leader is Azazel look partly like men, mostly a head with raven's wings.

One who tends to be untruthful will usually be able to feel a choking, scratchy sensation in the throat, and he often feels as if he was being pinched with pincers and tormented with a thousand arms. One who observes himself exactly will then notice how deeply he's still entangled in lies and dissimulations.

Then we should also become aware of a certain indifference and dullness with respect to spiritual worlds and their influences. Many pupils listen to an esoteric lecture, but what's given finds no echo in them. They can't lift themselves spiritually above everyday life or occupy themselves with spiritual thoughts. Others only want to see something in spiritual worlds out of curiosity, and meditate blind — to this end, without wanting to devote themselves to regular study, for that's too inconvenient for them. This has a harmful effect on the ego, from there on the astral body, then on the etheric body and namely on the part we call chemical ether, and from there on the physical glands and fluids.

There's a difference between esoterics and nonesoterics in their relation to Lucifer's hosts. For instance, Azazel and his hosts want to produce good effects on the latter, since they only work on them in a complementary way, as it were, and not to make them sick. But esoteric pupils are expected to be fully aware of their responsibility towards the world and themselves. That's why a dull esoteric can easily have the feeling on waking in the morn that he's drowning, especially if he abandons himself to ordinary sense life. And so an esoteric must constantly watch himself, and it doesn't hurt if he sometimes becomes a brooder about himself. ...

Source: Esoteric Lessons, Lesson 21, GA 266

Azazel

Berlin, 24 October 1911

Great seriousness should reign in esoteric life. An esoteric lesson should be something sacred, something that we're entrusted with, and we should never take it to be something ordinary. Probably none of us were aware of the necessary seriousness when we asked to be taken into this esoteric circle. We should place this seriousness before our soul ever more now and try with all of our might to make a connection with the spiritual world, that we can do through an esoteric training, so that we don't fall back into everyday life. One should look upon all exercises that are given to us as ones that come from the masters of wisdom and of the harmony of feelings. In esoteric life one should pay particular attention to egoism. We often tell ourselves that we're doing something selflessly, or we're unaware that we hate or envy someone, and as an esoteric we think that we should tell him the truth or should not have to take this or that from him. When such feelings arise we should realize that we're living in great delusions that are always caused by egoism. Such feelings always become manifest with a feeling of warmth that goes through the warmth ether part of our life body and also works on the physical body through the blood.

We must realize that such feelings have a harmful effect on world evolution. The hierarchies who have the task of regulating karmic connections then get Luciferic beings to destroy these effects by working harmfully right down into the physical body.

An icy cold feeing goes through us when we see our wickedness, whereas we get a warm feeling from satisfied passions when we don't have self-knowledge. A clairvoyant can see them in mostly human shapes.

A man is often more untruthful than he realizes. Many say: I don't really have any dishonesty in me, I have discarded that entirely. But this dishonesty is often so slight that we're usually not aware of it. Say that we read that there's going to be a theosophical lecture in some city and we decide to go there We don't stop to think that a dear friend lives in that city whom we would like to see again, or that there'll be a party there that we want to go to. We think that we only want to go there because of the lecture, whereas there are other reasons.

Our education may have gotten us to the point where we don't tell any big lies, but we may still have the desire to appear better than we are or to conceal the truth if it would make us look bad. All of this has a harmful effect on all world events. Such dishonesties work on our astral body, then on the life body's light ether and then on our physical nerves.

Azazel makes us aware of all such dishonesties. He and the beings he leads mostly have human heads with raven's wings. With egoism, envy, and hate when we wake up we have a feeling of disgust that must be ascribed to our doppelganger's action, whereas one who tends towards dishonesty wakes up with a choking, scratchy feeling in his throat. He'll feel as if he was being pinched by pincers and tortured by a thousand arms. Azazel and his hosts do that. And if we sense his action in the way indicated, it should make us realize how deeply entangled in lies and dissimulations we still are.

A third thing is indifference and dullness with respect to spiritual worlds. Many pupils listen to an esoteric lesson, but what's given doesn't find an echo in them. They can't get away from ordinary, daily life. They can't raise themselves spiritually or occupy themselves with spiritual thoughts. Others are curious and would like to see or experience something in the spiritual world, and they mediate without studying regularly because they're too lazy to do so. This works directly on the ego, from there on the astral body, then on the life body's chemical ether and then on the body's glands and fluids. Azael is at work in this. Azael and his hosts only want to bring about good effects in nonesoterics by working on them in a supplementary way, and not so that he makes them sick. The effects go deeper in an esoteric, and he's always supposed to be aware of his complete feeling of responsibility towards himself and the world.

On awakening, a dull esoteric will feel like he's drowning in a flood, which feeling will be all the stronger the more he gives himself up to everyday sensory life.

An esoteric should always be watching himself. It doesn't hurt if he sometimes broods about himself. That's the only way he'll understand what's suggested to us at the end of every esoteric lesson by the masters of wisdom and of the harmony of feelings:

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

Source: Esoteric Lessons, Lesson 35, GA 266

Mehazel

Berlin, 30 October 1911

If we dive down within us, we'll find a lot of beings there. This may seem strange to us at first, but the more we learn to look into spiritual worlds, the more we'll see that a number of spiritual beings are working in us — often to undo the destruction that we men bring about through foolishness. Let's ask ourselves where disease comes from. We know that every disease has a physical cause and also a spiritual one that must be looked for in immorality, passions or other mistakes in this existence but mostly in the previous one. The overcoming of every disease releases force, but this doesn't mean that one should drag out an illness as long as possible to make rapid progress. Everyone should do his best to get well fast. But if he's been sick for three weeks or six months, he should look at this as karma and bear it patiently and calmly.

But there's another reason why disease is something beneficial. Since the Lemurian epoch and on through Atlantis until the Mystery of Golgotha, mankind sank every more deeply into matter. Through the fact that we follow our drives and passions, we were brought ever further away form the goals that the Gods set for us. Disease is what bends this downward impulse and gives us an upward direction again.

Modern science condemns theosophical teachings and calls them dreams, but just read John's Gospel or any theosophical book and one will see the enlivening, refreshing effect it has, whereas a materialistic or monistic book desiccates one's soul. And since purely materialistic thinking only uses up forces the consequence in the next existence is that such people will be feeble-minded. Their brain will be a spongy watery mass; they'll want to think, but won't be able to. This feeble-mindedness is a good thing that keeps these people from sinking irrevocably. For through the fact that the brain is kept from materialistic thinking, the eternal can work on the core of the man's being after two successive incarnations, and influence it so that it strives upward again.

Something you'll all experience sooner or later in meditation is that one feels entirely loosened, the etheric body expands, one feels carried out to distant world boundaries, and then suddenly, one feels as if one were riveted to this world again, that one can't get away from it; it's as if one were sitting in a vise. That's good. It's our karma from previous incarnations that holds us fast like this. If our exercise would immediately take us up into the spiritual world before we took care of our karma, the result would be a long fall. Mehazel is the leader of these hosts who fix us to the earth. Like Samael, Azazel, and Azael, we get to know him when we descend into our interior. Then we'll really see that our interior is a field of action for demons, and as it says in the Bible: My name is Legion. We're supposed to become acquainted with these beings on our esoteric path so that we become sensible and gradually outgrow them. Azael works in such a way that he harmonizes what arises through dullness with respect to the spiritual world. We take over Azael's work when we acquire equanimity. Equanimity doesn't mean to jubilate or to complain about pain, but to recognize the reality of karmic action in everything. We shouldn't just believe in the karma idea theoretically, but should sense that karma is active in everything that hits us. This is the scourging stage in Christian initiation, that is, one should calmly confront all the pains of life that hit us like the blows of a whip and know that they're conditioned karmically. That's true equanimity.

We know that the physical world is only an inverted mirror image of the astral world. A very important meditation to make the words "The world is only maya" effective is the following. Everything around is really there in reverse. What we see from above downwards is really there from below upwards. A plant's root is above and the flower down below. The starry heavens we have before us is the result of spiritual beings who are really active behind us. Any sound that's received by the left ear comes from the right. We must become familiar with these facts and also with complementary colors. If someone has a lot of red spots imagine that they're green, or imagine that projecting limbs are cavities. One imagines the green in a plant as reddish purple and a brown root as dark blue. One should permeate all of these exercises with reverence and devotion. That's the feeling with which we can hope to approach the world's Godhead; whereas God remains an abstraction to mere thinking. If we glow through our thinking with reverence, devotion and humility, we may hope to penetrate the spiritual world.

Source: Esoteric Lessons, Lesson 36, GA 266

Seriousness in Our Exercises

Munich, 19 November 1911

Today we'll clarify how one should answer questions that approach one in esoteric life. An esoteric should never answer: "What is the heart?" by saying that it's the cause of blood circulation, for he shouldn't give physical causes for things. Everything physical, all of our organs and the whole human being are only symbols of something spiritual, of what higher hierarchies have created. Spirits of Motion already worked on our blood circulation on the old Sun. Then Spirits of Form descended and pressed forms and signs on all created things; and so the heart is only a sign for work that higher hierarchies did on us.

Everything that surrounds us is just maya. Good Gods created this world of maya for men, as it were, like a flower out of the real world so that man develops through it, kindles his ego on it, and penetrated it to get back to the world of real things once again. A man definitely needs this world of maya in his present condition. That's the way one should interpret Goethe's saying: for what is this beautiful world, the starry heavens there except for man to be delighted by it? This is a seemingly naïve expression for the fact that the world in this form and as we perceive it with our physical senses is really only there for us. For in reality, in the world of real things, everything appears with its spiritual causes behind it.

The world of maya doesn't exist for minerals, plants and up through cold-blooded animals. But it exists for warm-blooded animals, although the latter have no ego that could become ignited by it. These animals give a clairvoyant the impression that they have been brought into evolutionary conditions that they're not adapted to, and this upsets one. That's why the humanoid apes give one such a grotesque impression.

As we should become ever more aware, an esoteric should wrest himself away from maya and connect himself with the world of real things. He can only do this through the meditations from the spiritual worlds that are given by the masters of wisdom and of the harmony of feelings, those personalities who support the work of the higher hierarchies. For instance, they gave a concentration exercise that enables us to help in the work on evolution. It may take hours and many attempts, but if an esoteric concentrates on the place where he feels the heart in him, he'll notice that his thoughts don't remain with the heart he's concentrating on — they ray or pour out from there, and he'll see something like a rising, shining star whose center is the archetype of what the heart is the sign for. And the star's lines and rays will begin to resound and the sounds will become words, the primal words that created the heart out of the world of real things. And when the words are translated they're the words of the prayer to the Sunday spirit: Great embracing Spirit, many archetypes sprouted out of your life. (See EL 58) The star's rays are always the words: You were. Whereas the lines in between are the other words.

Thus an esoteric arrives at such an experience through correct, serious exercises. Although many don't do their meditations intensely enough, one who does can penetrate the world of real things, and depending on what he brings with him, he'll feel comfortable or repelled by it. The latter gives him pain and suffering, but necessarily so. For the good Gods can only tolerate what fits into their world; everything else is rejected.

An esoteric may often still have qualities that he's not fully aware of but which work on his development and that he's made aware of by certain indications. If an esoteric does his exercises diligently and correctly, and he wakes up at night with a feverish feeling, he can oppose this with a psychic coldness; and then he has a definite feeling that he's not alone, that he has awakened a doppelganger in himself through his esoteric training. Who is that? And what does he want? The good Gods have, as it were, hired certain Luciferic spirits to keep the qualities of men that don't belong in their world out of it. One of them is Samael, who counteracts our hate and envy. We notice him through the feverishness that befalls us as long as we're still full of these defects.

Another being becomes active if an esoteric hasn't overcome a certain untruthfulness that we're all guilty of, and that often lies so deep in our subconsciousness that we don't notice it. For instance, someone may decide to go to a theosophical meeting in another city because it would be instructive and good for him. But in reality he has quite different motives for going there, for instance, he wants to meet somebody there, but he doesn't admit this real reason to himself. Another dishonesty that's hard to notice is the following. We often think that enthusiasm is driving us into spiritual worlds, whereas we only want to wallow in the enjoyment of the feeling that results from occupying oneself with such things. Now if we do our exercises correctly and we want to press into spiritual worlds, we might get a feeling of being choked or of someone sitting on our chest. The Luciferic being who causes this is Azazel. He hinders us from entering the spiritual world before we've gotten rid of all lies.

If we do our daily duties in a lazy, inattentive and careless way, we might have a drowning feeling on awaking, as if our air was cut off and we were melting and flowing away.

The attention that we should pay to the surrounding world is of greater importance than most people think. If we exercise with real joy, it's a big help in pressing into spiritual worlds. For we should think of the spiritual causes behind every thing and encounter. Spiritual beings have to do what we don't do, because the work must be done.

Here's an example of how inattentively we often do our work. A new educational program was being started at a school, and all its teachers had to take an exam. The humane school inspector told himself: I won't ask the older teachers what they learned at the seminar long ago — they wouldn't remember it. I'll only ask them what they taught every day. But it turned out that many of these teachers did not know what they'd had their students repeat to them maybe twenty times. That's how little they'd been paying attention.

Like these teachers, we're often not thinking about our work. And the being who has to make adjustments for this is called Azael in occult parlance.

These three things are direct defects. A fourth quality we must also get rid of is avoiding one's karma, instead of courageously going to meet it. Under such circumstances if we want to press into the world of real things, we'll wake up in the morn with a feeling of being fettered, as if we were returning to a prison, and our whole body will hurt. This is brought about by Mehazael.

Of course exoterics must also bear the consequences of their defects, but they become manifest in them differently — as corporeal diseases for instance — and they don't become aware of why they got something like that. An esoteric should gradually bring everything into his consciousness, and esoteric schools help him with this. Of course what we perceive of such a school with our senses is only a very small part of it — a faint, outer sign. Just as everything physical, also sensations that we perceive, are only symbols for realities, so what an esoteric school looks like on the physical plane is only a symbol for what it is on the spiritual one. When such a school forms, it's mostly the case that a man immerses himself say in the heart through concentration. The experience forms itself into a formula in him which he can pass on to a number of pupils, whereby they're reconnected with spiritual realities. Our closing mantra expresses this creative force that's active in the spiritual.

Source: Esoteric Lessons, Lesson 37, GA 266

Maya

Berlin, 16 December 1911

In our meditations we'll soon notice that something like an inhibiting force is opposing us. We must get to know it and see that it's related to the earth's destructive power. The earth is involved in a destructive process. Outer science knows that certain new formations on the earth's surface are produced by destructive forces. The latter were on the increase since the middle of the Atlantean epoch through the karma that men created. Karma that has not been made good intensifies the earth's destructive forces, and the earth had already become a physical corpse that would have had to fall out completely from the plan of evolution if a strong power hadn't intervened. Everything that's connected with earth evolution is permeated by these destructive powers or Luciferic beings who remained behind on old Moon. A wise being saw this and remained behind even earlier on old Moon and old Sun in order to be able to mix a virginal element into earth evolution that's not taken hold of by destructive forces. Upbuilding forces worked until the middle of the Atlantean epoch. Men saw them behind the maya. Men increased the weight of destructive forces ever more through their unadjusted karma so that by the Mystery of Golgotha on April 3, 33, the scale's crossbeam was level, and then Christ's deed was placed on the other pan. He connected himself with the earth, so that now every man can find the Christ deep within his soul. A man would have had to drown in the maya that surrounds him, but the Christ connected himself with earth evolution, so that a man can find him again behind maya.

We know why this maya was woven by the Gods. It was so that a man did not live in the world of real things and have to be fettered by its glory, but could relate to it freely. We know what our states of waking and sleeping are. In ancient times, a man still saw divine beings through the veil of maya at the moment of waking, but at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, he only saw demonic ones. Then the portal closed completely and man had to drown in maya. In ancient times the mantle or power of Elijah had to be given to Elisha so that he could divide the Jordan and walk through it safely; whereas Christ's forerunner dipped men into the Jordan. A man had to go through water; but a material is given out of which he can himself make a bridge to cross it instead of drowning in it. Christ offers himself as this material.

Now a man might look upon the fact that he's supposed to join this victorious Christ force as an incursion upon his freedom. But the Christ leaves us so free with respect to the acceptance of his being, that he can't be found with anything earthly, not even with the intellect or reason, because they're something compulsive for men. Intellect and reason are permeated by Luciferic forces. Before they intervened, Christ remained behind and so men find him in the mystical sub-depth of their being. Previous religions were an expression of the respective state of science, and it's considered to be a shortcoming of Christianity that it's not at all connected with external science. In the future, it'll go beyond everything that is outwardly findable and knowable, and even today it can only be found in one's inner experience. How the revelation of Christ will take place in the near future has often been indicated.

Surrounded by maya wherever we look, something real sounds forth from us — a strong longing that lives in every human soul; for we are born from God. And we won't drown in more maya, for we die in Christ; deadly separatedness submerges in divine egoity. And we'll rise again, whole, strong and free; we'll be resurrected out of the Holy Spirit. So much has been stimulated by these words that you should open up for yourself in mediation that you have far more decades of work with them than are in the rest of your incarnation. Place these facts in your souls, shut out the surging of maya, and they'll become living forces in you.

Source: Esoteric Lessons, Lesson 38, GA 266

The Doppleganger

Hannover, 31 December 1911

Today we'll ask ourselves what we learned through our exoteric study of theosophy. At least theoretically the answer will be that we've become aware that the whole world and our physical body is maya or illusion. At least we assume this theoretically, and it more or less remains a hypothesis for us. But when we begin an esoteric training this acceptance of a mere hypothesis should increasingly become a truth. We should become deeply aware that we don't really have a firm ground in which we can take root that we only live on the surface of the foaming sea of life, that we never dive down into the real sea of reality, and that therefore we're always a plaything for illusions. Those who want to tread an esoteric path should and must arrive at this insight A certain feeling of despair, fear, and being abandoned will arise in most of them. The fear will be like that of someone standing at the edge of an abyss. Despair and forlornness will envelop a budding esoteric, because all the supports he thought he had in life will fall away from him like maya or illusion. His God seems to be torn away from him, because he only sees the false and delusive things in creation; this knowledge can make an atheist out of him.

And why must we tread this path, why must we look deep into the world of illusion, why have the Gods placed us in this unreal world? For they could have given us true reality instead of this play of life's wave on the surface. We'll see later that it's wise and good that the world is maya, illusion. If everything was true reality, we wouldn't look for truth and perfection any more. We couldn't develop any capacities, and since there wouldn't be anything wrong, no vices could exist. So we couldn't acquire virtues, we couldn't develop freely at all. Since we would always be living in the active, ruling Godhead, we'd never have an opportunity to freely dive down into the depths of reality, or to look for real knowledge. We would stop looking for God. "Looking for God" has a deep biblical meaning that one can only understand esoterically. After creating for six days, God rested on the seventh day. God had been active during the recapitulations of Saturn, Sun and Moon evolution, and he rested on the seventh day, after the world had been created. Then God couldn't be found anymore out to the horizon of our earth evolution. He was invisible, and this is deeply significant.

What's really divine is hidden behind visible creation — that's the great truth that we must look for behind sensory illusion. And since the world is illusion, it gives us an opportunity to develop our I through all false maya so that we shall find reality and the Gods. And what path does estoteric training point out to us, what means does it give us so that we can arrive at a knowledge of higher worlds faster than a man in everyday life? It gives us certain concentration and meditation exercises through which the soul forces in us can be awakened and that would otherwise remain slumbering in us for a long time yet. I want to emphasize that a pupil shouldn't go on this path out of blind confidence in his teacher or out of a blind reverence for him, because that would be the completely wrong way. He should use his own intellect in everything he does, and he shouldn't let other people think for him. He should test everything including what's connected with his exercises and meditation. When he's immersed in meditation, he shouldn't think that it has a suggestive effect, for that would be an entirely wrong assumption. They can't have a suggestive effect because they're put together in such a way that anyone can arrive at the imagination to which the exercises only point. Let's look at the meditation: In pure rays of light ... what could have a suggestive effect here, since the content indicates something unreal? For anybody who says this knows that the Godhead can't be found in light rays. The exercise is like a symbol that stimulates us to create an imaginative picture while we try to immerse our soul in the Godhead of the world. We should let our own intellect speak and not act out of blind faith. It's better to remain in doubt until we arrive at a knowledge of the truth through our own efforts. Someday we'll get to that point.

And what's the other unavoidable experience one has by faithfully doing the exercises? It's a splitting of the personality.

A man will begin to feel as if something was accompanying him, something that thinks and hears with him and even speaks with him if he's inwardly weak. It's a second ego that emerges, a doppelganger that one has placed outside one. The more seriously someone treads the esoteric path, the more of his old man he places outside him, that is, he sheds one skin after another like a snake. These skins become like a second body, a doppelganger who never leaves one again for the rest of one's life. In the old Egyptian mysteries someone who had placed his double outside him was called a kha man. The double is chained to the kha man to constantly remind him what he was or still is. That's not always a pleasant feeling. But the awareness that he always has his double with him will remind him of his defects and that he should improve himself. He should constantly feel this presence, otherwise things would get dangerous, and because of his many, high ideals and intentions, he would forget what his inner life and defects are. Under certain circumstances it could even endanger a high initiate's life if in spite of his high striving he would forget this double for even a moment. He could actually lose his physical body through death, somewhat like one who's concentrating on a sublime problem, forgets to pay attention to traffic and gets run over. The more the double appears the better it is for our development, for otherwise, we would be living under great delusions about ourself. For we can't see the progress we've made; only our teacher can. Let's recall the place in the story of creation where the Elohim had ascended to the sun after they created man. It was only there that they could judge their work: "And the Elohim saw everything that they had made and behold it was very good." They had attained perfection and that's why they could judge their work.

Source: Esoteric Lessons, Lesson 39, GA 266

How Luciferic Beings Help the Esoteric Student

Hannover, 1 January 1912

Yesterday we got to the point in our esoteric training where we place our doppelganger outside us. It's verily not a pleasant feeling when we see all of what we previously had in us unconsciously objectively before us, which then accompanies us wherever we go. We heard that it's a Luciferic being, Samael, with his hosts who brings the doppelganger out of us. From this, one sees that Luciferic beings also do good things and not always bad ones. If we always carried our defects in us unconsciously, we could never become aware of the destructive, ruinous things that they do in our body and in the whole cosmic substance. As long as Samael hasn't brought our defects out from within us, as long as we don't see them objectively before us as our doppelganger, so long the Gods graciously keep us from seeing the ruinous, destructive force of jealousy, hate, envy and other passions and emotions that we stream out into our environment. A clairvoyant sees that these passions tear something down in our physical body and in the cosmos' substance, whereas the good stimulates upbuilding forces. So basically Samael is a blessing for development. He shows us our inner nature all the more accurately the more seriously we take our training in hand. We then see defects objectively which we hadn't paid any attention to previously. Now we'll become increasingly disgusted with them and they'll spur us on to get rid of them.

An esoteric will then unavoidably have a feeling as if he couldn't get any air, as if he would suffocate. This feeling arises because the pupil begins to pay attention to his subtle soul stirrings, especially to the untruthfulness that slumbers potentially in every man. We don't mean the cruder lies and hypocrisies that lower natures generate, but the finer nuances that we don't notice through our superficiality and which we often do not even acknowledge. As an example, let's assume that someone learns that a theosophical lecture is going to be given someplace. He thinks: That's something good, I'll go there — but at the same time he thinks that he'll meet someone there whom he'd like to be with. Nevertheless, he tells himself that this isn't the main reason so that he imagines he's really going there on account of the lecture.

Such things happen every day; one lies to oneself and doesn't want to notice it. But now the untruths we hadn't noticed crowd into our consciousness so we think that they'll suffocate us.

Another example will show us how much men live on the surface in all of their actions and even in their duties. (Followed by the example of teachers who were supposed to be tested a second time and didn't know what was in the textbooks that they used every day.) This superficiality spreads out over our whole soul life, so that we don't even see the lies that we tell ourselves.

When we first begin to exercise we might not notice much progress; thoughts about daily life stream to us from all sides. It'll take a long time for us to notice any results from our exercises and for a second being called Azazel to begin to draw our attention to our superficiality, Samael and Azazel must both bring something out of us, but a third being must bring us something. He must bring us a longing for a higher, spiritual life. The next example shows us what's meant by this. A scientist who's fired by a desire for knowledge and would like to know everything suddenly finds himself at a wall, so that he can't press on with his intellect. In most cases he'll say: A human intellect can go no further, and he will resign himself to this. But others who feel that their soul is more alive will look further and will be led to spiritual science. There they think they can investigate beyond the limits that materialistic science has set up before them. But as soon as they tread an esoteric path, they'll feel like they're drowning. For as a man presses ever deeper into esotericism, the limits move ever further apart until he gets to a point where everything moves away and he's standing over an abyss. He feels no support anymore, everything disappears under his feet. It's only by going further on the path, by eagerly continuing the meditations that it'll dawn on him that maya must fall away before he can know the truth, spiritual reality; Azazel brings us this knowledge; he preserves man from spiritual or intellectual drowning.

Then there's a fourth being, Mehazael. He awakens the feeling in us and makes us aware that we're bound to time and space. The best way to clarify this is to place a condition before our soul that many of us have experienced. This is when we wake up in the morn and feel burdened by duties and worries that are like chains that the new day brings with it. This goes together with another one of wanting to shake off the chains that hold us fettered to this burden that is all the harder to bear since we know that we are powerless against it, that we must end ourselves. Here Mahazael shows us our karma. We'll be able to bear this burden more easily as soon as we tread the esoteric path. Mehazael shows it to us so that we don't resist it uselessly; for thereby we would only make our karma worse instead o shaking if off. And so in the end, these four Luciferic forces are a blessing for us.

We saw that every time we let our rage and hate run wild and we don't master our passions, we pulverize something in us and in cosmic substance, into which our feelings, sensations and thoughts flow continuously. Thereby we not only harm ourselves — we create karma for our environment. So far we've only studied karma theoretically. We'll now see how much deeper and more complicated karma's action is.

To become aware of the whole action of these four beings in us, we must keep on meditating strongly. In addition to meditating on the rose cross and on other things and esoteric verses that are given us, we should try to meditate on feelings and sensations, which is much harder. For instance, if we meditate on sympathy and immerse ourselves completely in this feeling, warmth will stream through us; meditation on antipathy will arouse a cold feelings in us. For instance, if we first meditate on the rose cross and then on a strong will impulse, an impulse for a good deed, we'll then see an inner light and feel a stream of warmth. Our exercises and meditations aren't successful right away; it goes slower with some and faster with others, depending on development and karma One will succeed after fifty times, another will take a whole lifetime, but we should wait patiently and go forward courageously. Where did the sun get the power to appear at the same place every morn and radiate its light?

An esoteric's life should become quite different from what it was before. He's really leading two lives — one that gradually crumbles and dies, and another one that gives him light out of the spirit from which he came. Wise masters in ancient mysteries expressed the dying of the old man and the flaming up of the new man through the Christ spirit in the words: Ex Deo nascimur, In ... morimur, because Christ's name was too sacred to utter. Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus.

Source: Esoteric Lessons, Lesson 40, GA 266

Becoming Silent

Berlin, 6 January 1912

When one gets further on the occult path through meditation and concentration, one gets to know one's doppelganger to whom one is chained. One experiences a feeling of loneliness with respect to the world and even with respect to one's loved ones. This feeling makes one strong and one should cultivate it. Another feeling that one should practice is one of thankfulness towards spiritual beings in the meditation: In pure rays of light gleams the Godhead of the world ...

Another thing is not to talk to others about the exercise that was given to one or about esoteric things in general. Silence awakens forces; chatter weaken the etheric body.

Source: Esoteric Lessons, Lesson 41, GA 266

Strengthening Oneself

Berlin, 7 January 1912

Appeal to the spirit of Saturday.

Yesterday we said that a man is connected with a doppelganger, that the Luciferic spirit Samael places him outside us and makes us aware of this. Through desires and passions that we previously avoided but that are not clinging to our double, it sometimes happens that he wants us to get carried away by anger or other things. This doesn't make much difference in the average person, but it shouldn't happen to an esoteric; he must watch himself more; an esoteric's life of feelings and drives becomes quite different.

One shouldn't think that a man becomes loveless and indifferent. His love is deepened and raised to a higher level; it becomes more selfless and ready for sacrifice.

An esoteric training that teaches the eradication of love and sympathy is on the wrong track entirely. For by changing our feeling life we get a better feeling for art and the world's beauty.

Also we shouldn't lament about psychic losses, or say: I can't do anything about myself — but in such despairing moments one should repeatedly say: Patience. Be strong.

The same applies when one thinks that one hasn't made any progress because one hasn't had any experiences in higher worlds.

What should be attained in esoteric training is soul loneliness. This must remain the soul's basic mood and shouldn't be shaken by anything, even when we meet the most beloved people. The spiritual world's portals open through solitude. This is the only thing that conditions pure spiritual life. But this doesn't' mean that one should deliberately look for solitude or avoid one's duties in the world; we should let this lonely feeling awaken in our soul, and not silence it through foolish thoughts, etc.

It's also very helpful if one does not want to change one's exercises frequently. It's best to do an exercise for a whole lifetime, but to do it right, and namely in such a way that ever new impulses are awakened in us when we increasingly immerse ourselves in the exercise. For instance:

In pure rays of light
Gleams the Godhead of the world ...

Here one shouldn't just imagine radiating light rays that symbolize the divine — one should imagine the Gods' forces that take possession of our interior, and then feel great thankfulness that should be carried into the cosmos — swim in the feeling of thanks and feel united with the Godhead. One can often only hang onto this feeling for seconds, but after continued practice one will be able to have it much longer.

One is often called back to reality by a ringing sound, but this exercise leaves one with a feeling of being one with God and mankind — quite different from a feeling of loneliness.

Chatter is a common sin. Whatever one discloses about the results of one's exercises is lost for the pupil. One should make this clear to oneself. It always signifies a weakening of the etheric body; people with a weak etheric body are always talkative. That's why it's helpful for us to close off our inner life as a secret. One could at most enrich one's esoteric life by discussing esoteric communications and truths with friends at the same spiritual level, but it's important that the right mood be present here. The forces and strength that permit us to advance grow through silence.

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

Source: Esoteric Lessons, Lesson 42, GA 266

Remain Silent

Munich, 10 January 1912

What we want to attain through esoteric exercises is to concentrate completely on one thought and afterwards to let an empty space arise in us and to wait for what flows to us as a result of our meditation What we attain thereby depends on the intensity of the perseverance that we have applied to this. One might think that one gets ahead faster by changing exercises, but the most profound esoterics have always said that they got the furthest by doing the same exercise with patience and perseverance for years.

One might get a spiritual exercise from someone and then not see him again on this earth. But if this exercise is done correctly and the pupil's karma is favorable, it can last him a whole lifetime and bear fruits for him until he finally finds his teacher in the spiritual world.

When an esoteric applies forces to his inner development, he'll notice that certain bad qualities had become more manifest. One of these is criticism, but an esoteric should realize how this desire to knock other people down arises. We heighten and intensify our egoity through the exercises, and criticizing is a desire to assert oneself, a wanting to be something special, a need to separate oneself. An esoteric loses interest in many outer things that he paid a lot of attention to previously. This goes so far that some esoterics have the feeling they can't see as well as before.

Most of them also complain that their memory isn't as good. But as we pointed out in previous classes this not paying attention to one's environment is a mistake. It can happen that someone doesn't do his exercises intensively enough to fill the inner emptiness with spiritual content, which he now no longer wants to fill with his previous interests. This gives him an urgent feeling, a driving restlessness, a need to fill his inner emptiness from outside. Then he's easily tempted to criticize outer things. In a way, this criticizing is understandable and justified, for after a man first closed himself off from the outer world and now steps out of himself again, he would like to assert himself against the world. But there's an egotism in this that should be suppressed together with the criticizing. When we attain this the forces that we would have wasted otherwise will turn inwards and fructify our soul life. The need to separate himself is something that's quite justified for an esoteric, for he can only make progress in solitude. The feeling of loneliness is unbearable for most ordinary mortals, but an esoteric should learn to tolerate solitude. This promotes his esoteric life a great deal. A man who longs for company dissipates his forces through this longing. It's as if this longing sprayed out from him in all directions He should gather thee forces and turn them inwards instead. That way he'll gain a great deal.

An esoteric must bring two qualities into equilibrium like pendulum swings, first the tolerance of solitude, that is, the strengthening of egoity, and secondly complete devotion to the duty that approaches us from outside, to the point of self-sacrifice or the forgetting of oneself. When we've gotten to the point where our heart longs for solitude in the midst of our surroundings, where the latter makes us suffer and we nevertheless give it our full, devoted love — then we've attained the unification of apparently contradictory qualities.

A third thing we should practice is to be silent about our esoteric experiences. An undeveloped man almost explodes if he has to keep a secret, and he feels very relieved if he can get things off his chest. But an esoteric should consider that this force that threatens to blow one up must be a very strong one if one prefers to store it up inwardly. That's why it says, "Learn to be silent and you'll get the power" — that is, the power to rule things within one. For instance, an occult investigator can perceive how much stronger a man gets when he has to suppress the telling of a secret for some reason. Say that a man has something on his soul that he would like to tell a friend. Intending to rush over to him, he meets another acquaintance at the door, but he doesn't want to tell this one about it. Later it's too late to go to his friend, so he has to suppress his urge to communicate. An occultist will see that the soul in such a person has developed a force that wouldn't have arisen if the man had fulfilled his wish to make his communication. The saying: "The mouth speaks out of the heart's abundance" shouldn't apply to an esoteric.

It might sometimes be good and appropriate for a nonesoteric to tell all, but not for an esoteric. By communicating his innermost feelings and thoughts, he sprays out forces that would have been very necessary for his soul. Every time we're able to keep thoughts and feelings to ourselves, especially ones that are connected with our esoteric experiences and difficulties, we acquire a soul force that we can't lose. One should speak about universally human things and about things that can be useful to people, but not about one's own affairs that are nobody else's business. Where does this need to communicate come from anyway? We seldom feel the need to go to other men because we love them selflessly, but usually because they have qualities that give us something. We should also drop the wish to be coddled. We should be grateful to people if they treat us badly, because then we can exercise our tolerating forces. We should try to love these people anyway, and we'll then notice that this is the right thing to do. An esoteric should also stop complaining. What does he complain about? Mostly about the thoughts that storm in on him from all sides when he begins his meditation. But he should be thankful for this and look upon it as progress that he notices how real the thought world is and that it can assert itself like this. He should just oppose it because he'll get stronger thereby We should figure out how these thoughts do it, look upon them as models of how we can concentrate ourselves and tell ourselves: We should immerse ourselves in meditation with the same intensity — then we'll attract spiritual forces that support us. It would be a very comfortable meditation if angels or other spiritual beings would come beforehand to sweep away the undesired thoughts.

Once an esoteric has overcome all of these qualities and has learned to speak the right amount, he'll arrive at what mystics called the portal of death, because he finds himself in the same condition as a man who has turned all of his interests away from the outer world as he gets ready to die. He has turned inwards or toward divine spiritual things. That's what's meant in the second part of our Rosicrucian verse: In Christo morimur; we die in Christ when we transform ourselves completely and turn toward the spiritual world again. Ex Deo nascimur: We're born from God and must incarnate in the physical. Then it's our task to develop so that we can say; In Christo morimur. We turn away from all physical things and raise ourselves to the spiritual that was always called the Holy Spirit, and in this we are reborn: Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus. The verse that masters of wisdom and of the harmony of feeling gave us:

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

Source: Esoteric Lessons, Lesson 43, GA 266

Our Meditations

Berlin, 26 January 1912

Esoteric development must be different in different ages, otherwise successive incarnations would be meaningless. But certain things remain the same throughout the ages. For instance, we find that Egyptian esoterics speak of: Arriving at the threshold of death, a walk into the nether world, an experience of the four elements, seeing the sun at midnight, and meeting spiritual beings face to face.

We can't explain all that's meant by this now, but some of the simple things will be mentioned.

One feeling that esoteric life can give rise to is that waking life seems to be just a sleeping life. This is not a mood that we could continually arouse in us, and it should never be our intention to let certain momentary esoteric moods spread out over our whole life. If we did that we wouldn't be fit to do our duties in the outer world. To be sure, as an esoteric sees nature's kingdoms around him, he should occasionally experience a mood of longing to press through to what lies behind them, to true reality, to what we're striving for, and compared with which all ordinary sense impressions have no more value than those from sleep. One who wanted to live in such esoteric moods all the time would have to withdraw into a kind of a monk's life. But that is not the kind of esotericism for which Rosicrucianism strives. One who would like to withdraw like that would have to be aware that he acquires certain privileges with respect to his fellow men, so that he can thereby prepare himself for several lives in the outer world, but that if all men wanted to live like him, no progress in human evolution would be possible.

Our exercises are designed to bring us into the spiritual world, but through inattentiveness we often don't notice the progress that we make thereby. One can arrive at the feeling that we make very poor use of the forces of thinking, feeling and willing that are poured out in us, but that in our present condition it would be impossible for us to lie in that thinking, feeling and willing — it would shatter and destroy us. Ancients called the feeling of standing before an experience that wants to overpower us: The arrival at the threshold of death. For there one felt: what I'm experiencing now I can't master with my thinking, my feeling or my willing; now I know what it feels like to have died. Most of you have probably gone through this many times. It's due to inattentiveness that one isn't aware of this. During meditation one will have often had the feeling that one was absent for a moment, and then when one come back to oneself, one thinks: I was sleeping. If one took the trouble to find out what one went through in such moments, one would sense that maybe they were the most tremendous experiences that one ever lived through.

Another experience is this one. It doesn't have to come after the first one. One can get the impression that the second experience is the first because one slept through the first one. One has the feeling that one is sitting in one's body, that one is carrying it with one. Just as one can distinguish a weight that's attached to one's arm from the arm muscles, so one learns to feel that one's arms are weights that one drags with one. Then one can have the feeling that one is sitting fettered in a nether world — not corporeally, but psychically all the more. This is what they called going into the nether world. In one's exercises one then feels as if one was paralyzed and then as if lukewarm water was being poured over one.

One can also have the feeling that the bad thoughts that we have are not just thoughts but are something real. If we thought something bad about a person we see this like a shooting arrow that can insure the person's soul more than a physically shot arrow could hurt his body. As soon as we see what we do, thereby, we notice that the arrow flies back at us an burns us like fire, as if we were in the netherworld's flames. This is the so-called going through the elements. It doesn't have to be seen as a vision, one can feel it on oneself as if one had burn wounds all over one. When we feel like this, we, as it were, send forces out of our etheric body which however can only go to the boundary of our aura. There they meet the cosmos' forces working everywhere in this surroundings that make these forces turn around and direct them to certain centers where they bring out super-sensible organs. It's as with physical eyes that were formed out of indifferent organs by light. As long as light worked on them, one couldn't see yet. This only became possible when they were finished. Likewise we can only use our higher organs after we've built them up in the described way.

Source: Esoteric Lessons, Lesson 44, GA 266

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