77. EL, Berlin, 1-17-'11
The
techniques of esoteric life is, as it were, given in our meditation.
Here one lets thoughts work upon one that awaken feelings and
sensations that aren't derived from the physical plane. There
are two kinds of thoughts: the ones that are awakened in us through
the perception of the physical world, and thoughts such as theosophy
gives us. Everything in that physical world is maya, including our
physical body. Through what, is this really there? Through what do
the animals, plants and stones around us exist? Through the fact that
higher beings took a thought many millions of years ago and thought
it over and over again. In these things it's as the proverb
says; steady dripping hollows the stone. The same thoughts cover each
other and eventually form physical objects. The harder a stone is,
the longer beings thought it. Our physical body is nothing else than
the thought of many higher beings.
If we
only think the ordinary thoughts of the physical plane, then this is
really no thought, but the mirror image, the illusion of a thought.
For everything that's from the physical world was already
thought a long time ago, and all we do is to repeat these thoughts,
but in the wrong way. For instance, if someone hears a bell ringing,
then the sounds is nothing real, but it's like this: millions
of years ago what became the bell and also what became our brain was
thought, and the knocking together of these two gives the sound that
we hear. All physical thoughts are unproductive and eventually have a
destructive effect. They bring our astral body into a certain
oscillation, but this was already put into it by higher beings. So
one who never thinks supersensibly never brings new formations into
the astral body. What happens in the astral body works back upon the
etheric body, but the etheric body is inclined to take new forms and
thoughts into itself. Old forms have a destructive effect on it and
from there into the physical strands of our nervous system. All of
this must be restored again in sleep. The astral body is inserted
into the higher hierarchies for awhile and thereby gets forces; the
etheric body is separated from the astral body and becomes
regenerated thereby. One couldn't live long without sleep.
However, nonsensorial thoughts have a productive and upbuilding
effect They enable a man to fit himself into the hierarchies. New
forms, the lotus flowers, are created in his astral body.
That's why it's necessary to repeat a meditation hundreds
of time.
The
ideas we form about theosophical teachings — for our thinking
about them is also meditation — will at first not be entirely
sense-free. For instance, if one says that Saturn is a warmth sphere,
and that the harmony of the spheres resounds in Devachan, one will
imagine this in sensory pictures at first — as the heat in our
blood, a beautiful symphony, and the like. But if the thought is
repeated, the sensory element that is still attached to it falls away
by itself and the super-sensible part remains.
Out in
the world mathematical thoughts are the most sense-free ones; but
when a modern thinks a triangle, he thinks it with color and a
certain thickness, that is, not abstractly enough. But one gets
closer to super-sensible thoughts when one notes relations.
Remembering a sound is a memory of a sensory things, but remembering
a melody is something that consists in relations of sounds that
don't as such belong to the sense world. And imagine two
scoundrels or two good people, where in the first instance one is
worse than the other, or one man does more good deeds than the
other — then there's something in this relation
that's not from the physical sense world, something that leads
us up into the spiritual world. If a man thinks of a scoundrel or
sees one, it'll give him an unpleasant feeling; but it he sees
two scoundrels next to each other in a play, the worst scoundrel will
always please him more than the lesser one, because greatness is
always attractive. For instance, this is what the effect of various
Shakespeare plays is based on. So it's important to see and to
study relations in the outer world, for this leads us away from
sensory things.
Another
way to develop sense-free thinking is to let processes run in the
reverse direction, for instance, by saying the Lord's Prayer
backwards or by looking backwards through our meditation.
That's the only way that a man can improve his memory.
Man's memory has gotten much worse in the last four to five
centuries, and this will be the case even more if they don't
avail themselves of the opportunities that are now being offered. The
time for these opportunities is particularly favorable now, and later
on they'll simply not be there anymore. Memory will no longer
be a mere waiting to see whether things want to emerge from a dark
ground. It'll be like a groping towards the past or like a
sending out of feelers that'll grasp for the past like towards
some thing that's real. Our time is particularly favorable for
this development and for esoteric development in general.
Thus,
we see that our body is an illusion; it's thoughts of beings
who are also thoughts. Thought thinks thoughts — that's a
meditational statement that's very important. It's not
our brain or etheric body or astral body that thinks — thoughts
think thoughts. That's something that also emerges clearly from
our verse:
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.
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