From the Contents of Esoteric Classes

95. EL, Hannover, 1-1-'12

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.