63. EL, Oslo, 6-16-'10
Speaking exoterically, theosophy is a knowledge. What we esoterics
learn in exoteric lectures we should take into our feeling, willing
and thinking in such a way that we can then pour it out again into
exoteric life. That's esoteric work. And what happens through
the same? How can we carry a quite simple theosophical truth directly
into life, for instance, the one about going to sleep and waking up,
where the physical and etheric bodies remain behind on going to
sleep, while the ego and astral body go into the spiritual
worlds?
A
primitive man used to receive prayers that he said in the evening
before going to sleep, and in the morning after waking up, and that
was good, for he strengthened his soul with spiritual forces as he
prepared his soul for higher worlds, and after he left them, he again
permeated his soul with higher forces, and as it were, sucked out
soul forces from spiritual worlds.
The
mineral, plant and animal kingdoms below man are permeated with
spiritual forces that always become renewed; the same is true of the
four elements fire, water, air, and earth. Things are different with
men. If a man doesn't connect himself with these spiritual
forces, he doesn't' receive them. If he goes to sleep
without preparation he doesn't get any forces in the worlds he
enters then. No matter how learned, scientific and high-ranking a
materialist is, if he goes into spiritual worlds unprepared in the
evening, he stands far below a simple primitive man who has already
connected himself with them through his prayer. Man has increasingly
forgotten prayer in our materialistic age with its very admirable
scientific achievements. He goes to sleep and wakes up with his
everyday thoughts. But what does he do thereby? Something happens
through this omission. He kills some of the spiritual life and forces
on the physical plane each time.
A man
goes into spiritual worlds unconsciously. For instance, if he went to
sleep at 11 p.m. unprepared and awakened at 12 in spiritual worlds,
he wouldn't know his way around; he'd have the feeling
that he was spread out over endless spaces and that he had lost his
center. He would be in ecstasy or “beside himself” in the
real sense of the word. In ancient Druidic mysteries this ecstasy was
artificially induced to let a pupil experience higher worlds
consciously. But 12 helpers had to stand at his side so that the
pupil didn't lose his ego; they poured the whole power of their
pure egos into him. That's how much power was necessary to
prevent this dissolution.
This
Druidic initiation was the outer way, whereas the inner one was
followed in ancient Egyptian mysteries. There the candidate for
initiation had to look for the path through the lower astral world
for three to five days, that is, to climb into his own interior, and
12 pure priests had to stand beside him, to prevent his lower drives,
desires and passions from overpowering him — that slumbered deep
in his nature and would otherwise have worked themselves out in the
course of his incarnations.
Unheard
of vices would have been awakened in him if the 12 priests
hadn't protected him from this through their purity. These two
paths wouldn't be possible today, for a modern would rebel
against such interventions in his ego and against being treated like
a child with respect to his drives, desires and passions.
The
Rosicrucian school combines both paths in it and also leaves a man
completely free. Through the meditations he's given he must
himself acquire the forces that helpers used to give him. An esoteric
increases the spiritual forces that are necessary for mankind through
this work on himself. He combats the desolation that will arise
through the terrible materialism in which men have simply forgotten
their connection with spiritual worlds and have forgotten how they
can get forces out of them for themselves. When souls become ever
more desolate, empty and despairing it'll be the task of
esoterics to let their spiritual forces work in a living way.
They'll maintain their soul's cheerful equilibrium in
spite of all blows of destiny and thereby let happiness stream into
the rest of mankind to ease their soul pains as torture, as a result
of the attainments of materialistic science. Moderns have found many
means to anesthetize physical pains to make them disappear. But they
haven't really disappeared that way. Exoteric science tells us
that no force is lost, and the force of pain doesn't get lost
either — it just has an effect in other regions. The pains come
back as soul agony. Men will have to go through strong soul pains,
and esoterics will then use the spiritual forces that they bring down
from the heights to ease these sufferings. Be it ever so
unconsciously, each of us resolved to ease mankind's sufferings
when we set out on an esoteric path.
|