80. EL, Strassburg, 2-19-'11
One
could ask why people want to devote themselves willingly to an
esoteric life today, and whether it wouldn't be better to tell
oneself that if a divine spiritual will wants to let me enter higher
worlds it'll do this by itself, and so I'll wait. But if
one asked the present, esoteric leaders of the Rosicrucian stream
about this, they would have to reply: You're forgetting that
you as a man are placed on a battlefield on earth, and namely in the
battle of good spiritual powers against Lucifer and Ahriman. Both are
trying to recruit the souls of men for their armies.
What
does Lucifer want to make out of men? Looked at one-sidedly, he has a
sublime goal. We know that the previous embodiment of our earth Old
Moon, was the cosmos of wisdom, that it was completely permeated by
wisdom. But Lucifer lacked the force of love that's now
incorporated in the earth. And so he's permeated with wisdom
but he knows nothing about love at all. He has devoted himself
entirely to wisdom, he's gotten high on it as it were, and he
wants to fill all of earth's children with wisdom.
And
this is a big temptation for men again and again. Lucifer's
forces live in us, and he in effect tells us: If you take me
completely into yourself you'll see all relationships,
you'll know everything, and everything will be clear to
you.
He
wants to give men wisdom without love, which leads to selfish
knowledge. Lucifer still thinks that he'll get human soldiers
for his army, and he's working very hard to achieve this.
Lucifer
is in all knowledge and perception. There's only one place
where he can't get at us, and that's when we quite
devotedly immerse ourselves in our meditation in wisdom without outer
influences — then we escape Lucifer.
And
what does Ahriman want? We wants to give men power. Ahriman is a
spirit who fell away even earlier. Archangels were men on old Sun,
but quite different ones than we are. At that time, thinking was
immediately translated into deeds. Men were mighty beings back then.
Thought was reality immediately. Wisdom then was not like it was on
old Moon yet — it was power; but power without wisdom leads to
black magic, to darkening.
We
conquer Ahriman through the attitude that we want to devote ourselves
to the World Spirit, that we only want to be his instrument, to only
let him work in us. If we do our meditation with this attitude we can
conquer Ahriman.
We
conquer Lucifer by filling our ego completely with the
meditation's content. Lucifer can't get into the ego,
only into the astral body.
The
Christ impulse is love. But love without wisdom would be very bad.
For instance we're told that there was a mother who loved her
daughter like an idol and wouldn't refuse her anything. Through
this wrong training the daughter became a famous poison mixer at the
beginning of the 19th century. The daughter's
individuality is now incarnated again as a black magician. It
reincarnated so quickly because such beings are practically spit out
of the spiritual world.
Lucifer
is redeemed by Christ. Men who take Lucifer in on Jupiter will be
mighty beings; but it'll be like a burning of these egos in
wisdom without love.
Then on
Venus one will be dealing with black magic; the condition will be
like a spiritual drowning. Men must already have the will for
spiritual things now so that pure love can shine on Venus.
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