From the Contents of Esoteric Classes

68. EL, Berlin, 11-4-'10

Those of you who've been to esoteric classes before know that what is said here isn't said by me only; we'll ask the help of the Spirit of the Day for this — (the Friday verse followed.)

When we look at the course of our life between birth and death, then from an esoteric viewpoint we see that it's there so that we can learn something for our esoteric path. If we survey our physical life, we see that we bring the organs and pre-requisites for everything that we can do in life with us — except for three things that we must learn here in physical life. We can see color very soon after birth, we do not have to learn it, the ability, for it is simply there; the same is true of hearing, etc. The only three things we have to learn are walking, speaking and thinking or the making of concepts.

The main thing in walking is that we have to learn how to stand. We simply fall down before we can do that; we don't have a feeling of balance yet. We must first learn to feel our way into space's three dimensions And we must also learn to speak and think.

If we've learned to walk in the first year of life, we can go on our way. If we've learned how to make concepts we can give life to truth and do living things through the word. We learn to walk, speak and make concepts in the first three years of our life. We find these three years again, symbolically, in the three years that Christ lived on earth.

Everything that an esoteric pupil needs for his esoteric life is given to him in esoteric classes. He gets answers to all of his questions from what is given to him in mediation exercises; he only has to listen properly. What's given to us as a meditation must acquire life in us. Such as the verse: In pure rays of light …

We shouldn't just let these words pass before us; they should come to life in us. We should devote ourselves entirely to the meditation's content, forget everything that's around us in physical life, personal interests and so on. As a reward for the fact that we've, as it were, given up physical life, have sacrificed it for the duration of the meditation, a tone will resound in us after the first two lines:

In pure rays of light
Gleams the Godhead of the world …

That will be maintained for as long as our karma prescribes. It's not a tone that resounds from within, but one that sounds towards us from outside. No more will be said here, everyone must experience and grasp it himself. And while this sound, sacred word and unspeakable name resounds, the pupil should make a vow that he could also make before, but at this moment he must do so. The vow is that the pupil tells himself: I will consider every sound besides this sacred word, if it's not physically caused, to be a work of Ahriman.

This is a withdrawal, a turning away from what's around him, which creates a feeling of coldness in the pupil; a feeling of indifference takes hold of the man; he feels isolated and surrounded by a great frost. The pupil must bring love towards this frosty feeling that's created by pure thought.

When he's heard this sound he thereby gets the direction towards the east; the sound comes from the east. The pupil can orient himself in the spiritual, he no longer falls over like a child who hasn't learned how to stand and walk. He can now stand and walk in the spiritual.

And when the pupil lets the third and fourth lines live in him:

In pure love for all beings
Radiates the godliness of my soul

He will then feel warmth, radiant living warmth. Only experiences that he has during this feeling of warmth have real truth value; everything else is Lucifer's work. And if he has really enlivened the last three lines:

I rest in the Godhead of the world
I will find myself
In the Godhead of the world

he will then grasp the truth.

So in the first two lines the pupil has attained the way, the truth in the last three, and then life, spiritual life flows from the lines in between.

A pupil must develop something that's often talked about in outer life but is not put into practice, and people don't have an inkling of its depth. Many talk about love for men, and yet what people in outer life consider it to be doesn't correspond to this feeling. An esoteric pupil should begin by telling himself in all humility: I know nothing about human love. We love men for various reasons but all of this is not the right thing. We should love a man because he's a human being. Christ set a good example for this.

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.