From the Contents of Esoteric Classes

EL, Berlin, 11-1-'07

In pure thoughts you find the self that can maintain itself.

Pure thoughts are ones that don't refer to perceptible things, but to basic theosophical teachings about man's make-up, existence between death and life, earth evolution, etc. Pure thoughts give man sure inner support, whereas purely material thinking leads to instability and nervousness. Meditation leads to a loosening of the astral from the etheric and of this from the physical body. This loosening can be dangerous unless pure, logical thinking is practiced. The way of looking at things on the astral and devachanic planes is quite different from the one on the physical plane, so that one can easily get confused there; only thinking logic remains the same; one should cultivate this. Thereby certainty is gained in outer and inner life. Strong people will only listen to their inner voice, whereas weak people will always listen to others' advice.

If you convert the thoughts to a picture you'll experience creating wisdom. (Jachin and Boaz)

The pure thought should change into a picture, create a picture. For example, one can imagine how a plant turns its flower to the sun and that man is an inverted plant. Imagine how the fine substance of a plant is gradually converted into flesh and thereby took in passions and desires. Man should not try to become plantlike and spiritual again and to free himself from all the slags of the astral body, until it's gotten to the point where it becomes creative through the word that it utters.

Another exercise that makes abstract ideas into mobile and living pictures is to imagine the old Moon as a kind of peat of living spinach containing woody bark that corresponds to our present mountain chains. Likewise imagine the old Sun as being full of life and spiritual development. Then more recently the sun left the earth-moon so that men wouldn't spiritualize too fast, and then the moon left so they wouldn't rigidify and scleroticize. Thereby an equilibrium was attained. Everything that was created by the Godhead was first there as a picture, just as a painter has a spiritual picture in his mind's eye before he puts it on canvas.

If you condense feeling to light you'll reveal the forming force.

If for instance one feels that the sun is spirit and creative joy, and the moon is something cold, coarse, contracting and scleroticized, then the latter will produce a light phenomenon that goes from orange to red into brown, whereas in the sun the feeling condenses to a light phenomenon that goes from blue through violet to reddish violet. If this phenomenon becomes ever more intense the beings who are the bearers of this light appear in the colors and take on forms and shapes.

If you concretize will to beings you'll create in world existence.

Once man's will — that's now impure and little developed — has become stronger, he'll be able to create with it. If he can think himself into the future condition of the earth and work with the world directors, his will helps to bring about this new condition and is co-creative in world existence. If all men didn't want our earth to become Jupiter, it couldn't happen — although this would be black magic. This is just mentioned to show how mighty and powerful man's will is and will become.

These four mantras correspond to pure thinking, Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition.