Esoteric Lesson

GA 266II — 10 March 1912, Mannheim

Esoteric Lesson

Recording A

About meditation

One fruit of meditation is to gain a sense that we are striving for and entering into a connection with the beings of the higher hierarchies, and to experience this as a feeling of being accepted into the higher worlds, of having arrived at the place where we originated, warm and alive. The feeling of being accepted into the spiritual world must be warm and alive. Everything, everything must become different for the esotericist; concepts, feelings, and insights must change.

About egoism

It is Luciferic beings who have given us memory. Those who practice thriftiness in physical life are terrible, terrible wasters in the soul-spiritual realm. We must become thrifty with these forces and transform them into powers of vision. Self-knowledge alone can lead us to this.

From morning to night, we scatter our feelings and emotions too selflessly.

We must first pass through egoism in the soul and spirit. The danger for human beings in striving to enter the spiritual world is that they also become egoistic in the physical world. Therefore, with proper training, moral and intellectual purification go hand in hand.

We must realize that as esotericists, the impossible is demanded of us and that we strive for the impossible. All striving is impossible, and being unselfish is also impossible!

Greed for knowledge and progress is not the right thing for the esotericist, but rather a serious sense of duty to develop, for the divine spirit has placed powers within us which it develops without our intervention; these are passive powers. But the Deity has also placed active forces within us, which man himself must develop through action. And it is the greatest sin against the divine spirit not to develop these forces, which the Deity has placed within us for the salvation of human development and progress. And these powers within us are so strong that, even if it takes years, they will lead us up into the spiritual world, and therefore we must not become impatient, but should say to ourselves: I will wait, for I know that these powers will do this—if only we are devoted to the spiritual world in the right way.

Supplementary exercises

The supplementary exercises develop the qualities necessary for us on the physical plane, such as serenity, control of thoughts, etc.

Gradually, we will then have a place in our hearts, in our souls, where we keep our most sacred things, where we are esotericists, while we stand outside in life on the physical plane. It goes without saying that this will not happen without a struggle. As esotericists, we must become fighters.

Thoughts that rush at us are the beings of the spiritual world that flutter around us, and the more we try to keep them away, the more strongly they rush at us. We should not complain about this; no, “be glad that this is so,” one may say to the student, for this is a success of meditation, which shows that thoughts are a spiritual power. Courage, fearlessness, and trust are what the esotericist needs.

Record B

The esoteric path is not only full of struggles and thorns, but the esotericist should and must be imbued with a fundamental feeling of bliss that he has been accepted by the higher powers into those regions from which he originated.

During serious meditation, the practitioner realizes that he is, so to speak, disturbed by impressions, everyday worries, circumstances that intrude from the physical world, and many believe that this hinders their higher development and therefore causes them to progress too slowly. In truth, this contact with the real forces and beings active in the physical world is a salutary means of self-knowledge and a constant opportunity to test the powers gained through spiritual knowledge.

The esoteric student must acquire a great deal of productivity and serenity and learn to make those forces serve him which no one who wants to fulfill his earthly mission can avoid, namely the Luciferic powers, which have by no means brought only evil upon humanity, but also the justified egoism of free, independent, individual development.

Here the esotericist must learn to guard against that appalling waste which we all allow ourselves to commit daily by squandering our best inner forces in unnecessary feelings, in irascibility, envy, and worry, forces which should be used in justified egoism for our inner development. Instead of greed for spiritual knowledge, which is worthless, it is necessary to acquire a sense of duty towards the higher powers, towards oneself and towards the development of humanity: to tell oneself that it is a sin against the holy spirit of development not to do everything possible to concentrate one's inner forces in an economical manner in order to perfect oneself as much as possible. The greatest waster is the miser, because with his greedy, anxious thoughts he wastes his best powers, that is, he is uselessly self-centered.

This egoism in the esoteric realm must not be transferred to the exoteric realm. Here, the demand for selflessness, for the denial of one's own ego, remains. Therefore, every esotericist must realize that he wants the absolutely impossible and that it is therefore inevitable that he will constantly find himself in conflict and have to struggle. On the one hand, it is important to live in justified egoism of pure inwardness and to regard meditation as the most hidden sanctuary of the soul, but then to turn one's attention to the outer world and to work selflessly in it with the powers one has attained, so as not to fall into unjustified egoism.

Here we can learn a lot from simple, humble people who have faith and therefore face death with the certain knowledge that they will be accepted into a connection with the eternal higher powers, while philosophers who have lived in one-sided intellectual egoism face death with bitterness.