From the Contents of Esoteric Classes

62. EL, Hamburg, 5-25-'10

Prayer to the spirit of Wednesday:

Great embracing Spirit,
In the knowledge of your being is world knowledge that is to become mine.
You are.
I want to unite my soul with you.
May your cognizing leader illuminate my path.
Feeling your leader, I tread the path of life.
Your leader is the sun of life.
He lived in my longing.
I want to take his being into mine.
You are.
May my force take the leader's force into itself.
Blissfulness moves into me.
The blissfulness in which the soul finds the spirit.
You are.

Great embracing Spirit
May my I raise itself from below upward,
May it get an inkling of you in the all-embracing.
May the spirit of my being be illumined
By the light of your messengers.
May the soul of my being be enkindled by the fire flames of your servants.
May the will of my I grasp
Your creatorword's force.
You are.
May your being permeate my will
That my I be grasped by an understanding of your light's shining,
Your life's love-warmth
And your being's creator words.
You are.

Last time we saw that the symbols we're given can and should work o us in our meditations. To round off these three esoteric lessons, we'll speak about the wrong paths that we can get on as esoterics.

In ordinary exoteric life, we have all possible terms for qualities that we know are good or bad. These terms are often inadequate and one-sided for an esoteric, for every quality has two sides, good and bad, and one of an esoteric's main tasks must be to keep the right balance. He must constantly be on guard and be watching himself in general. Human qualities are such that a man can control them very well with his ego if they stay in the right balance. But if he lets any one become too intensive, the ego can get under the control of this quality. This isn't very dangerous in an exoteric; he's always brought back into equilibrium by the spirit of everyday affairs. But things are different with an esoteric. A quality that he allows to control him can get him into all possible dangers. Something like that can even become a disease of the physical body in his present life. Let's make this clear to ourselves by an example.

Who doesn't know ill feelings and discords. We've all been subjected to them But an esoteric must try to combat them with his ordinary ego For if he lets ill feelings master him, something happens to him. He succumbs to the wrong spirit of heaviness. Such spirits of heaviness really exist. A spirit of heaviness belongs to the archai, and he's the one who brings us back into our physical body when we wake up in the morning. This falls into his sphere of activity, and that's good and right for us. But some of these spirits overstep their sphere and want to work in the realm of the Spirits of Form. They're the ones who take over an esoteric's etheric body when he gives in to ill feelings and who work on it so that he succumbs to hypochondria. This then becomes manifest physically in diseases of the intestinal tract. This can also be said in exoteric lectures, but in our esoteric lessons we should always remember that we receive direct messages from the master who intended them especially for esotericism.

Another quality against which an esoteric should especially be on his guard and should be on the lookout for s that he doesn't succumb to it, is vanity, pride. We're often not aware of how much we've already succumbed to it and so must especially watch it. Many people imagine that they would like to help out of a “love for mankind.” But if one tells them that they can only achieve this through constant, diligent learning, one notices that they don't want this; they would like to start doing things right away, without thinking how much harm they can do through the wrong help. That's a very dangerous vanity to which all of those benefactors and confused fanatics have succumbed who preach their world view with nice words and unclear phrases, for they think that it's their mission to do this.

So what happens if an esoteric doesn't' suppress this vanity? He succumbs to Spirits of Light and namely to the regular, good ones who are recruited from hosts of Wisdom Spirits, but to ones who work down into the realm of the Spirits of Movement Good Spirits of Light have the task of leading a man into the spiritual world when he goes to sleep, to guide him into it so that he's unconscious when he gets there. But if an esoteric wants to accelerate his development in an irregular way without learning what he must know about spiritual worlds, then one of the other spirits of light overpowers him and influences his etheric body in such a way that the brain is affected by it. The result is confusion, fanaticism, and eventually insanity.

Anyone who succumbs to the spirit of heaviness only harms himself, and one should try to help him in every way, for we should love each man and not just mankind. But one who succumbs to the Spirits of Light can harm everyone with his confused fanaticism. Therefore, we should repeatedly ask whether the reasons we want to develop ourself are really selfless ones; we shouldn't get tired of learning, for the more we learn, the easier it is to become modest.

We shouldn't get scared if we feel the spirit of heaviness on waking in the morn, so that we feel exhausted and our limbs feel so heavy that we can hardly move them. This is a passing stage and a sign that we've gotten past the improper stage of hypochondria. And anyone who has the feeling that it's hard for him to keep his feet on the ground at certain times, doesn't have to be upset, for he has passed the stage of fanaticism, and the phenomenon is just a regular one in his development. A man's soul is kept in balance by the spirit of gravity and the Spirit of Light, and esoterics should always try to maintain this equilibrium.

We're referred to this balance by a master of wisdom in the prayer that we say at the close and which contains all the wisdom of the world that will be revealed to us evermore:

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.