83. EL, Berlin, 3-15-'11
Our meditation should stand
in the sign: Steady dripping hollows the tone. A study of theosophical
works is an effective preparation for exercises. It's better to have
read a book 25 times than to read five books five times each, and one
who has read a book two or three times shouldn't imagine that
he's read it at all. If on a particular day of the year, we
have experienced this or that in our meditation, then if we've
really studied hard in between, we'll be able to experience
much more on the same day a year later. It's good to keep on
doing the same exercise for long periods; that's much better
than continual changes.
We should develop certain
feelings and not just get more thoughts through study. One can find starting
points for something much deeper in simple sensations. For instance,
we should begin to pay attention to the feeling of grasping an object
or of being grasped by the hand.
We can feel a distinct
difference if we imagine the sensation that's aroused in us when we grasp
a snail or when a snail unexpectedly crosses our hand. If we develop
the two feelings well, we can form a concept of the difference
between the subsensible and the super-sensible worlds.
The whole physical world
and our feelings about it is an illusion or maya. We can picture it as a
field or plane with the super-sensible world above and the subsensible
world below it. The super-sensible world is one that can be connected
with the feeling of being grasped and the subsensible one with the
feeling of grasping.
In Rosicrucian teachings
the subsensible region was always called the elemental world, the world
of the elements fire, air, water and earth.
One presses through to the
element of earth if one meditates on triangles, rectangles, pentagons, and
geometrical figures in general. One should do this by writing these
figures on the palm of one's hand with a finger. Then eliminate
all thoughts about the hand and writing and only think about feeling
the writing on the palm as if were floating freely in space, and
immerse yourself in this feeling. That's how one gradually
grasps the earth element.
One grasps the water element
by thinking a fixed, material point and another mobile point that moves
in a circle around the first one. Then one should write this in
one's hand and proceed as with the first figure. One should
think of the second point as one that rotates continuously.
For the air element,
one thinks of two fixed points that want to fly away from each other
after they first describe a kind of a semicircle round each other and
then fly apart into endless distances. If we work with this figure
exactly as with the preceding ones, we then grasp the air
element — we don't just feel air caressing us, we really
grasp it.
For the fire element,
one thinks of a closed figure such as a loop or a figure 8. One should
especially feel that there's an intersecting point where the
curve touches itself.
One should keep on doing
these exercises for some time. They're not easy; one must acquire a certain
skill in the feeling of sensations in space, without using one's hands, and
also in holding on to the figure. But then this exercise leads to a
grasping of the elemental world; one learns how to grasp it.
However it's a rule without
exceptions that these exercises also make one egotistical. That's why one
must never do them without also developing a great sympathy for everything
that gives men joy and sorrow.
When we go up into the
super-sensible world, we're actually taken hold of by higher beings who
use us as their instruments, just as we use our eyes, ears, etc. The
danger with this experience is that one loses oneself ever more, in
the bad sense of the word. Therefore, it's also necessary to develop
courage and fearlessness. Then we can calmly let ourselves be grasped
by beings in the spiritual world, so that we feel: now we're
being inspired by an angelic being, now by an archangelic beings, and
so on. Imaginations lead into the super-sensible world. One sees that
these two directions towards above and below are combined on the
Rosicrucian path. As a clairvoyant, one must learn to strictly
distinguish between the elemental world and the super-sensible
beings — between two things that appear to be united in the
physical world. Someone who saw a being and its elemental expression
in one picture would be making a big mistake and would be mixing
everything up. It isn't easy to separate the two regions at
first because they can be seen by both astral and Devachanic vision,
but when one ascends and sees a being, one gradually learns to
descend immediately to find the elemental part of this being below
the physical world, just as when one sees an object one can
immediately look down and see its reflection in the water.
One couldn't describe the
Saturn condition if one couldn't raise oneself up to beings such as the
spirits of Will and Spirits of Personality, and also press through to the
fire element. Likewise for the Sun condition, one must know Spirits
of Wisdom, archangels, and also the air element. Both of these are
described together in
Occult Science
— how the thrones let Saturn
warmth stream out, etc. but in observing it, it's necessary to
feel it as a duality.
One must be prepared to
see and hear things in the spiritual world that one has never seen or
heard here below. One who just expects to find things he's familiar with
over there will never be able to press into the spiritual world. That's
what's expressed in the second line of our Rosicrucian
verse: In … morimur. It's only when a dying in
Christo takes place in us that we can be reawakened by the Holy
Spirit. In a way, this is a commentary on the two-part verse
that's given to us by the masters:
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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