From the Contents of Esoteric Classes

EL, Berlin, 3-27-'14

Even when we can't be together much physically we can always feel united in the spirit. Our thoughts touch each other in the etheric world. Our ego expands in the thoughts that are thought by our etheric body and not by the physical body which is only a mirror or echo. It's not I who think — it thinks me. The more we make our etheric body independent the more we experience that our ego expands into distant spaces, and we also experience our inner life in solitude and one finds one's other, true self in the depths. A man in his skin is only as if in a sheath in which spiritual forces surge stormily up and down. It's as if our thoughts step out of us and around us like figures. Then we experience our good and bad aspects — our good side as if it points into the future and leads a sprouting plant-life there — and our bad side that must not get to actions, but remains purely at the thought level. So that it can later serve as food for the good. Food for our three kingdoms only arose because the beings who went through their human stage on old Moon experienced their bad things meditatively, without letting it become deed. Evil arose on earth because retarded Moon beings, luciferic beings, meditate their bad thoughts not on Moon but on earth now and inoculate it into men. On the other side we must feel our ego spread out ever more in space and not inside our physical sheath. The relation of our sensory surroundings to the spirit is felt to be like that of air bubbles or spherically shaped nothings to the water they're in. Experience this often and repeatedly in us in thought. Three verses that we meditate in morning, evening and on Sunday can help us here and to make our etheric body independent. The first strophe expresses what's said in Ex Deo nascimur, the second in, In Christo morimur, the third in Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus: (See above.)